Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this important piece of legislation, the Fair Work Amendment (Family and Domestic Violence Leave) Bill 2018. I suspect there's hardly anybody in this country who doesn't know someone—a family member, a friend, a colleague at work, someone within one of the groups in which they mix—who has been the subject of family and domestic violence. This is a blight upon our society. It is one which governments of both persuasions, people on both sides of this chamber and elsewhere in state and territory parliaments, have worked for a long time to try to address in a more successful manner, but the challenge remains with us in this place as elsewhere in the country, so I want to speak on this bill.

I've also seen the impact of this. As some members will know, my wife and I worked for many years with an agency helping couples and families. You see the consequences even when talking to young couples approaching marriage, for example, where something like the experience of domestic violence in their parents' relationship has had an impact in an intergenerational way upon their own relationship. As we learn from social science research, these impacts are not confined merely to the people who are caught up in these situations; they are intergenerational and can extend even beyond the next generation into a third generation. So this remains an important subject for all of us in this place to address.

As other speakers have noted, this bill will provide as a minimum standard five days unpaid leave for all employees covered by the Fair Work Act. It is an important step to take in relation to family and domestic violence. Since 2013 the government has committed over $300 million to address family and domestic violence. In 2015 the government committed $100 million through the Women's Safety Package, which provided crucial funding for the 1800RESPECT national telephone and online counselling information service to provide more support for men and women and also for local women's caseworkers to coordinate support for women escaping domestic violence, including housing, safety and budgeting services.

In 2016 a further $100 million was committed under the third action plan of the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children. In previous incarnations, in the employment ministry and the social services ministry, I was pleased to work with colleagues at both the state and territory levels and elsewhere on the various action plans as part of the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children and to work with advocates for addressing the blight of domestic violence—with people such as Natasha Stott Despoja. I note that work on the fourth action plan is now well underway. As part of this process the Minister for Women, Ms O'Dwyer, who is at the table at the moment, co-chaired in December this year the COAG National Summit on Reducing Violence against Women and their Children.

Recent budget measures also add to this issue. There is $55 million for community legal centres, directed to frontline family law and family violence services; $10.7 million for family law courts to employ additional family consultants; $12.7 million for establishing the parenting management hearings, a new forum for resolving family law disputes between self-represented litigants; and $3.4 million for expanding the national pilot program for specialist domestic violence units to provide wraparound legal and other support services to women who are experiencing or are at risk of domestic and family violence. In addition to that, in this year's budget there were further measures announced, including $22 million over five years to address elder abuse in Australia; $14.2 million over four years for the Office of the eSafety Commissioner; $6.7 million to maintain funding for DV-alert to continue its domestic violence response training for community frontline workers; and an additional $11.5 million for the national sexual assault, domestic and family violence counselling service, 1800RESPECT, for the next two years. 1800RESPECT has provided vital support services for many people. Of course, that is why that additional funding was provided. In November, just last month, we had the first Women's Economic Security Statement, worth $109 million over four years. All these measures are important. If there were a simple answer to this problem then it would have been found by now. There is not, so we must continue our efforts.

In conclusion I wish to say a couple of things. Like previous speakers, I'd like to acknowledge the work of local groups in my constituency who have worked with the victims of domestic violence in particular and groups that support women within the community. The Women's Friendship Group in Doncaster, for example, is an important agency. It's a mechanism by which women come together to support each other. It has done a very wonderful job. Then there is the important work of Doncare, the major welfare charity in my electorate. It has provided for the victims of domestic violence and families for many years now. I've been delighted to help them with funding through the Stronger Communities Program for a variety of services that go to help the victims of domestic violence within the area.

Finally, I think we all have a responsibility in terms of the language we use. There seems to have been a coarsening of language within the community and within the polity in Australia. People get on social media, like Facebook and Twitter, and say all sorts of misogynistic things off the top of their head. We have a responsibility to stand up against that and call out people who are misogynistic in their comments online. We should not like or retweet those sorts of comments. We should call out people who have a history of making those sorts of comments. It's this sort of coarsening of the language which gives licence to other people within the community to say similar things, and if people use language of this nature then, unfortunately, that gives licence to some people to think that they can act that out within their own families. This is a regrettable trend which has occurred, and I believe all of us have a responsibility to call it out when we see it.

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