Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Labor interjects and says they love that, and it's great, and they ask what the plan is. Well, the plan is: make the big corporations pay their fair share of tax; stop the price gouging; freeze rents; make them pay their fair share of tax; put dental into Medicare; wipe student debt; and make public school genuinely free. You could do it all if you had the guts to stand up to the big corporations instead of taking their donations. That's the plan, Labor. That's the plan. And the fact that you're not doing it—you scratch your head and you wonder why people are abandoning the big parties at a rate of knots—well, that's why. It's because you are just doing what the big corporations say and you're leaving people out to dry.

One of the other critical matters when it comes to economic inclusion is that you see the consequences of economic inclusion, you see how far the system is under stress, when it comes to the people who are the most vulnerable and you see how they are being treated. Where a lot of these things intersect—the failure to have rates of income support to lift people out of poverty, the failure to build enough public housing and the failure to regulate rents so that everyone can afford to live in those houses—is where the economic impacts of that play out, particularly when it comes to people, particularly women, who are fleeing family and domestic violence. Six women have been murdered in just one week, five of them by men they knew. Men's violence is an epidemic, and it's time the government policies reflected this urgency to tackle violence against women and their children. First Nations women, women from culturally diverse backgrounds, women in regional areas, older women, LGBTIQ+ people, and women with a disability are even more likely to experience violence.

Saturday 25 November was the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Every year on this day we recommit to ending sexual and physical violence against women around the world. But frontline services are still underfunded, and women and children are being turned away as a result. Enough with the empty promises. Enough with ignoring the impact of financial insecurity and housing stress on women's capacity to leave. Enough with underfunding the services that women reach out to in a crisis. The government has said that it wants to end violence against women within a generation, and that is a very welcome goal. But it's not stumping up the funds to deliver that. The total federal funding commitment over the next five years is $2.23 billion—less than half of the $5 billion the sector needs to ensure that no-one is turned away.

The government have spoken often about the difficult choices in the lead-up to the budget, but right now they're choosing to spend $313 billion on tax cuts for politicians and billionaires while baulking at $1 billion a year for women who are escaping violence. The housing crisis is felt even more acutely by women and children who are experiencing family and domestic violence. Often women are forced to choose between abuse and homelessness, because there's nowhere else to go. Women who are on low wages or income support are especially vulnerable without the resources to escape violent situations. Yet this government persists with the cruelty of keeping income support payments like JobSeeker below the poverty line and has the audacity to cry poor while dishing out hundreds of billions in tax cuts and investment property perks for the rich.

Today and every day for the next 16 days the Greens are calling for full funding of frontline DV services. The women's safety sector has repeatedly called for $1 billion a year of investment to meet demand. Labor's last budget provided less than half of that amount for frontline services. Women deserve better than that, and $1 billion each year is a very small price to pay to help end the ongoing epidemic of violence against women and children.

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