Kate Thwaites (Jagajaga, 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 continuing to invest in women's safety initiatives that support the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children? How is this making a practical difference now?

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

I thank the member for Jagajaga for her question, because promoting the safety of women and children experiencing family, domestic and sexual violence is a key priority of our government, and it has been since we've been elected. That's why we have made it a priority to work with states and territories along with and victims-survivors to deliver the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children, and we've backed that up with a $3.4 billion investment. This investment is supporting women and children who are experiencing violence now and is also focused on preventing violence, intervening before it escalates and helping the recovery of victims-survivors.

One of our key investments in this month's budget creates the permanent Leaving Violence Program. Victims-survivors now have the certainty of knowing that the safety net will be there should they need it, where they can access $5,000 of support and also important safety planning, risk assessment and referrals to support pathways. The Leaving Violence Program builds on improvements we've made to the previous escaping violence trial. Early evidence showed that victims-survivors needed more than just a payment, and that's why we have invested and continue to invest in additional resourcing to provide individualised support. Just last week I heard about the vital impact this was having when I spoke to frontline workers who said that the individualised supports and, importantly, the risk assessment is actually keeping women safe.

A key principle of the national plan is preventing violence, and just this weekend we launched our national consent campaign designed to encourage parents, caregivers and other adults to understand, learn and talk about consent so that our young people can too. We've appointed an expert panel to conduct a rapid review into best practice prevention approaches. The expert panel will deliver advice to government on how we can strengthen prevention efforts under the national plan with a focus on greater consequences and accountability for perpetrators. This will complement a lot of the work under way under our national plan to strengthen our existing targeted approaches to preventing violence, including our early intervention adolescence program, which supports at-risk young people—particularly at-risk boys—who have experienced family and domestic violence, breaking the cycle of it occurring generation after generation.

We all need to work together, because ending violence against women and children will take all of us working today in a concerted way, and I commend this work to the House.