Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Higgins, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Social Services. How is the Albanese Labor government leading action to address the national crisis of family domestic and sexual violence?

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank the member for Higgins for the question. Family and domestic violence destroys lives and is absolutely unacceptable in a country like Australia. The safety of women and children experiencing family domestic and sexual violence has been and is a priority for our government. That is why the Prime Minister convened a dedicated national cabinet this month, where all governments committed to build on efforts under the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children. This plan was developed in partnership with victims-survivors and put victims-survivors at its heart. The national cabinet was clear that all governments will strengthen their efforts to address violence against women and the conditions that enable and promote it.

Following national cabinet, the Albanese Labor government announced we will establish a permanent Leaving Violence Program to replace the current trials underway. Victims-survivors will now have the certainty of knowing a safety net will be there, should they need it, where they can access up to $5,000 in financial support, safety planning, risk assessment and referral pathways for support. Importantly, the payment will also be indexed annually to ensure it maintains its current value and complements other financial support, like crisis payment. The Leaving Violence Program builds on the improvements we've made to the Escaping Violence Payment Program since we came to government. It became clear in the trial that the trial had not been resourced appropriately to allow for the necessary safety planning and referral support needed by many clients who had never engaged with specialist services before. This investment that we have made complements numerous other investments we've made under the national plan, with more than $3 billion of investment now in safety, which not only responds to the needs of women and children experiencing violence but also, critically, supports the work of preventing violence, intervening before it escalates, and the recovery of victims-survivors.

Our government legislated 10 days of paid family domestic violence leave for all employees. We've boosted funding to frontline services, which includes restoring the funding under the former government that was due to cease in June last year. We have delivered more safe places for women and children experiencing family and domestic violence, which will assist more than 2,800 women and children each year, and there will be an additional 720 new places available under the next round. We are putting the focus on perpetrators by developing a national risk assessment framework for service providers to manage the risk posed by perpetrators, as well as trialling new perpetrator interventions in partnership with states and territories.

These are just some of the actions our government is taking. We know there's more to do, and we all need to work together—government, civil society, businesses— (Time expired)