Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This evening, in this grievance debate, I would like to talk about family violence, particularly in the Northern Territory. Nationally, police deal with 5,000 domestic violence matters, on average, each week. To put that into context, so far today police in Australia will have dealt with an average of 452 domestic violence cases.

In my electorate of Lingiari, in total, a third of NT police time is spent dealing with domestic violence. Aboriginal women are victims in 72 per cent of cases. Sixty per cent of assaults in the Northern Territory are associated with domestic violence, and 72 per cent of those subject to that are Aboriginal women. Fifty-six per cent of homicides in the Northern Territory are the result of domestic violence. Sixty per cent of all assaults are committed despite the presence of DVOs.

Violence is endemic against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. It devastates communities and destroys families. In comparison with other women in Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are 34 times more likely to be hospitalised from family violence and 10 times more likely to be killed as a result of a violent assault.

In September of this year the Northern Territory coroner, Greg Cavanagh, undertook an inquest into two domestic violence cases. He said at the introduction of his findings:

1. Domestic violence is a contagion. In the Aboriginal communities of the Northern Territory it is literally out of control. As a Local Court Judge I witness it most days. As the Coroner I see the terrible lives these women endure and their horrifying deaths.

2. To cast light on the true horror I determined to hold an inquest into two such deaths …

These were into the deaths of Kwementyaye Murphy and Kwementyaye McCormack.

His findings are insightful but they just portray, yet again, the horrendous nature of domestic violence and the suffering that is occurring across this country—particularly in Aboriginal communities—and the impact that has on the women themselves and their families. Mr Cavanagh said in his findings that the criminal justice system had failed to protect women from domestic violence.

Domestic violence, as we know, is at a crisis point. Sadly, the Turnbull government, instead of handing it as a national crisis and showing more leadership, is cutting funding to front-line services. Aboriginal women, as I have portrayed, are completely over-represented in all the data. The electorate of Lingiari is home to particularly hardworking women's legal services: Central Australian Women's Legal Service, CAWLS; Katherine Women's Information Legal Service, KWILS; North Australian Aboriginal Family Legal Service; Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women's Council Domestic and Family Violence Service; and the Central Australian Aboriginal Family Legal Unit.

Nationally, over the last five years, Family Violence Prevention Legal Services have delivered 15,900 legal advices, 4,200 non-legal advices and support, on average, 2,384 clients per year. A recent report by the Family Violence Prevention Legal Services found that 30 to 40 per cent of their clients were turned away because there was not the capacity to support them. These services are on the front line, dealing with unique legal and difficult domestic violence cases, which continue to be a significant issue.

In June 2016 in Katherine, 80 per cent of reported assaults were associated with domestic violence. In Tennant Creek it was 67 per cent and in Alice Springs it was 57 per cent. The situation is getting worse. KWILS, in Katherine, had a 14 per cent increase in service delivery last year and CAWLS in Alice Springs had a 17.3 per cent increase in domestic violence related assaults. The prevalence of domestic violence and its negative impacts on families and the community at large, and the cost it incurs, cannot be ignored any longer. Yet, sadly, instead of doing more, the Turnbull government is doing less. Both CAWLS and KWILS are now dealing with increased demand for their critical services, but both of them have had their funding cut by the Turnbull government by 30 per cent.

Almost six per cent of clients of CAWLS and KWILS are Aboriginal women. KWILS provides legal services to clients based in Katherine, 59 per cent, and in outreach and remote communities, 41 per cent. The cuts in funding will mean KWILS will experience even further pressure on their two lawyers who are already stretched, managing over 520 cases a year. KWILS had a 14 per cent increase in service delivery compared to last year, which continued to rise. In June 2016, 83 per cent of reported assaults in Katherine were associated with domestic violence. Similarly, CAWLS in Alice Springs will have no choice but to limit the services that it provides. It will limit the number of clients it can assist, limit its ability to run complex matters in contested hearings and limit their outreach programs to remote Aboriginal communities. This is a national disgrace.

Yesterday I met with a Yolngu woman, Rhonda, from Galiwinku. The first issue she wanted to raise with me was domestic violence. She talked to me about the work she had been doing through the school to educate and prevent the cycle of domestic violence in her community and the frequency of it in that place—in partnership with the NO MORE campaign. The NO MORE campaign is a homage to those Indigenous men in remote Territory communities taking action in their communities. Men link arms as a symbolic gesture to the NO MORE violence campaign. A very great Aboriginal broadcaster is responsible for doing that work. Charlie King, who operates out of the ABC in Darwin, does this work magnificently. As the campaign grows, the NO MORE aim says the same: to reduce family violence by engaging men in the community.

The issue of family and domestic violence is not going away. Through grassroots agendas and campaigns such as NO MORE there is the potential to influence the national agenda. I want to commend the recently elected Northern Territory government on their announcement of a specialised domestic violence court that will be trialled in Alice Springs in light of the harrowing findings from Mr Cavanagh, the Northern Territory Coroner.

The National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children 2010-22 is currently in its third action plan, promising results from 2016-19. One of the six outcomes in the plan is 'Indigenous communities are strengthened'. It is specifically in place to address the national priority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander family violence in communities. However, how can this priority be addressed if the funding resources to key services such as CAWLS and KWILS and those other legal services that I referred to are cut? That is a national disgrace.

It deeply saddens me that we are in the sixth year of a 12-year plan and we are still at a crisis point. The Turnbull government's 2015 $100 million package to stop violence against women, announced in September last year, made little commitment to direct funding to assist Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. Their frontline services were given a marginal $5 million of the $100 million commitment. We need to be doing a lot more. This should be a national priority. It is a national disgrace.

But I want to make mention of the work not only of CAWLS and the magnificent work of KWILS and the other legal services and the NO MORE campaign but also of men right around this country who are standing up to talk about violence. This is a really important thing. Aboriginal men in my community of Alice Springs. For example, Johnny Liddle, of the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress, has been at the forefront of the NO MORE violence campaign. We had marches up and down the Stuart Highway in Katherine and in Alice Springs—men bringing the attention of their community to their responsibility as men to look after the interests of their families and their children.

We know if we do not address this scourge there will be an inevitable result—the horrendous suffering that we now see amongst children in these communities will be exacerbated. It is no mystery to any of us who work and live in these places—I know, Mr Deputy Speaker Coulton, of your own experience—but unless we work with communities to resolve the underlying issues that cause family violence we will not get a result that we want. But, at the same time, we have to make sure the frontline services are there because if they are not there as sure as night follows day the people who will suffer most will be the victims of family violence—the women and their children.

I say to the government, you have a real opportunity here, and an obligation and a responsibility, to provide appropriate funding for these services to ensure that they can provide the required services to their current and future clients so that they do not miss out, so that they are given fair and proper treatment, fair and proper legal advice and the counselling and support that they deserve. This is a national disgrace. It should be a national priority, and I would like to think that everyone in this parliament sees it as I do.