Bridget Archer (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I won't speak for very long. I'm not really prepared for this speech, but I feel compelled to rise again in this place to speak on this issue. I think I have probably spoken on this issue in this place more than any other issue that I have spoken on in this place. But nothing really seems to change. Everybody here I know is really well intentioned. Everybody feels this despair, this desperation to do something about this. But it's not changing, and it's not good intentions that are going to change that. We need to be very intentional about how we are directing our funding. It's not enough for us to go out and say we're investing record funding into addressing this issue if we're just throwing it into the wind. We know that there's more work needed in prevention and there's more work needed in frontline services.

Every time I speak in this place on this issue, I get a flurry of correspondence to my office with more stories—more horrible stories—of the circumstances in which women in our country are living now, every day; there were two yesterday. It is bigger, I think, than we even realise it is. It comes to our attention when women die, but there are women living in extraordinarily horrible situations every single day in this country, and we aren't seeing them. I acknowledge that the government has attempted to address that in this budget with their leaving violence payments. It's not enough, and I don't think it's the right place to direct that funding. That's when women are at the most risk—when they're leaving. And $5,000 is not a lot of help to leave. We're hearing that through our office through the trial of that program. It's difficult to access, eligibility is not straightforward, and people are waiting too long to get that. I acknowledge the work that the government has done since they have come to office on all of the measures that we've heard about. They are good and welcome, but we have to do more.

I am pleading with you as somebody who does have lived experience of this, as I know many others in this place do. It ruins people's lives forever, even if they survive it. Please do everything you can. Do more for frontline services. They have the answers. They're doing the work. But they're doing it on the smell of an oily rag. Please, please do more.

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