Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on an issue of grave concern. Rape and Domestic Violence Services Australia, RDVSA, which has been providing trauma counselling to 1800RESPECT clients since its inception by the Labor government in 2012, has decided to withdraw from the 1800RESPECT trauma counselling service. The original contract was tendered and by agreement given to Medibank Health Solutions telehealth, MHS, as the lead agency, with the requirement that they subcontract the counselling services to RDVSA. The service is internationally recognised as setting the benchmark in this particularly difficult area of work, and has been recognised by the United Nations for its groundbreaking work and excellence. 1800RESPECT provides specialist domestic violence and sexual assault counselling through telephone and online counselling. Due to national awareness campaigns, calls to 1800RESPECT have increased exponentially. Unfortunately, there has never been a similar increase in funds to RDVSA, which provides the specialist counsellors at 1800RESPECT, that would allow it to employ international counsellors or purchase the infrastructure necessary to ensure that all calls are answered immediately. It is a tragic indicator of the growing inequality and desperation of Australians under this government that unfortunately all DV and other crisis services have the same problem: the number of people needing their services is always increasing while their funding never keeps pace.

Between 2015 and 2016, RDVSA wrote to the Minister for Social Services, Christian Porter, five or six times setting out evidence of the exponential increase in calls and online contacts and providing a range of alternative models for improving the rate of call response. They also asked for additional funding that would allow for the employment and training of additional specialist sexual assault and domestic violence counsellors. While it is true that more funds were provided to RDVSA, it was only ever catch-up money. It was never sufficient to respond to the calls and online contacts that the service was currently receiving.

Late in 2015, the federal government commissioned a report on the proposed so-called triage service to respond to 1800RESPECT as a means to more adequately respond to all of the calls coming in. The report offered three suggested models for improving the response rate for calls to 1800RESPECT but raised serious concerns about the so-called triage service. RDVSA also raised concerns, and proposed several alternatives to what the government was proposing—to no avail. Instead of funding specialist counsellors at RDVSA to answer calls from every person who tries to contact 1800RESPECT, from 1 August 2016 the federal government chose to provide public funds to a private multinational health insurer, MHS, to provide the triage service, to answer calls from women, children and men living with sexual and family violence. RDVSA, a not-for-profit specialist service, asked for around $2 million in additional funding to answer all calls. MHS, the multinational health insurance fund, was given $3.5 million of public funds to operate their call centre. The MHS call centre also answers calls from several other crisis lines. Its annual report celebrates that its profits have increased by more than 500 per cent to these services and it now plans to double these profits. RDVSA reports that calls to 1800RESPECT have increased by around 300 per cent since the line was established, and the MHS claims that there has been a 410 per cent increase in calls in recent months.

But while MHS is celebrating its new profits, traumatised callers to 1800RESPECT are now required to repeat their story several times, which often traumatises already fragile and desperately frightened people. The tragic irony is that as well as being more expensive under the MHS model, calls from desperate women and children to 1800RESPECT are now put on hold and, yes, there is still an abandonment rate. Calls still go unanswered to the MHS call centre model. The triage centre is a virtual call centre. The workers who answer the calls from the triage call centre work from their own homes using their own home phones and laptops. They are themselves becoming traumatised and they are not receiving appropriate support or counselling. So what we have is a much worse service which costs more and potentially damages the very people it's meant to support as well as the counsellors who are providing the service.

The problems for women, children and men who call 1800RESPECT are now going to get worse. In February this year MHS announced that it would put the specialist counselling service provided by RDVSA out to tender. This is interesting because although it is true that when it was established the contract to provide counselling services was due to expire in June 2017, so was the contract for MHS, yet there's been no retendering of the MHS contract; it has been simply rolled over by the cabinet. RDVSA tendered to continue to provide the specialist training service that it has been delivering since 2010. Three weeks ago it was offered a contract that provided just 25 per cent of its previous funding and imposed a number of conditions that led to the board of RDVSA voting to reject that contract.

Whilst there is a range of problems with the proposed MHS contract, I want to focus now on what I believe to be a particularly dangerous aspect of this new arrangement. In order to comply with the MHS contract, RDVSA is required to hand over all of its clients' files for the past six years. All calls to RDVSA, as well as all other organisations that have been offered MHS contracts to provide counselling, will be recorded. The RDVSA counsellors are required to sign a waiver of their right not to record. There is a range of issues here. RDVSA has never recorded calls from clients because it recognises that this is a threat to the safety of their clients. It regularly receives requests from perpetrators of violence and from those perpetrators' lawyers demanding copies of client records. RDVSA has never handed over its files. However, the same cannot be said for MHS, which has said that it will comply with the law if asked for records and files.

I do not need to spell out the problem here for members in this chamber. No-one needed to spell out the problem for the counsellors or the board at RDVSA. There was unanimous agreement among the workers and the board that this was absolutely a deal breaker. There is no way that the professional counsellors of RDVSA or their board would ever agree to hand over those files, even at the cost of their jobs and, ultimately, their organisation. The RDVSA board and the union representing counsellors wrote to MHS and to Minister Porter asking for meetings on the issue. Nothing changed. MHS insists that it has a right to the files. It has never explained why it needs those files or what it intends to do with them; just that it wants them.

Alarmingly, MHS has form in this area of dealing with confidential files. Two years ago, MHS, which operates Garrison Health from the same telehealth service as the 1800RESPECT line, admitted to the biggest data breach in the history of the armed services when, inadvertently, the files of all Australian personnel serving in the Gulf were leaked to the Chinese government. This is the same service that is asking for the files and records of all of the people who have called 1800RESPECT for the past six years. In addition to the recording of calls, because there will now be not one but five organisations taking calls from clients, each of these organisations will have access to the central filing system. This means that people across five organisations will be writing and reading those files. There's not much chance of seeing something going wrong here!

There are so many issues that we really need to tease out. The problems are absolutely evident, but, in the limited time here, I think the call to government is that this service, RDVSA, must be reinstated and it must have the funds it needs into the future so that it can continue to assist the vulnerable people who call on this service every day. (Time expired)