Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. The Northern Territory Working Women's Centre helps women with workplace issues, including sexual harassment. The Respect@Work report recommended an increase in funding for centres like these, but instead the NT Working Women's Centre has been defunded. Why?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. As I indicated in response to a question from the member for Warringah, the government will be making our response to the Respect@Work set of recommendations from the Sex Discrimination Commissioner before the budget. That has been personally taken up by me as Prime Minister, working with the Acting Attorney-General as well as the Assistant Minister to the Attorney-General. That will be addressing the many recommendations that are set out in that report, including the one that you've referred to in your question.

At the same time, as the Minister representing the Minister for Women has responded in this House, the government is working with the states and territories, because, in many cases, the sorts of services that you are referring to are joint funded with state and territory governments. And that's why it's so important that, as we go to the next national action plan, these funding arrangements are put together and work together, as they have been now for many years, under the process started, rightly, by Prime Minister Gillard, supported by the coalition while in opposition and taken forward while in government, which has included a billion dollars in additional funding for the national action plan program. So we do believe the very services that you are referring to are important. I am sure this will be able to be addressed in the program we're now engaged in.

It is true that many programs that are funded across the Commonwealth have program funding that goes for a set period of time, and then ongoing funding is determined as it approaches the conclusion of that funding period. That was indeed the case for many of the programs that were run by Labor when they were in government. One I remember very well was universal access to early childhood education, or the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness. These are agreements that, in government, particularly in relation to the homelessness agreement, we have made permanent funding arrangements for. It's an important area of funding. I will be addressing the many matters in the Respect@Work report within the weeks ahead, and I look forward to being able to update members on that when we next meet.