Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Senator Hughes, for a question on this particularly important matter. The federal government continues to work with the sector and with individuals to make sure that women and their children are supported and have the necessary avenues should they need to be assisted as a response to family and domestic violence. Over the past few months, during the coronavirus pandemic, my colleague the Minister for Women, Senator Payne, and I have been working very closely with the state and territory ministers to make sure that our response is appropriate and that we have made sure we have all the safety measures in place, particularly recognising that it's actually the states and territories who have the primary responsibility for the delivery of frontline services to women who find themselves in a situation of needing help.

In addition to that, the Morrison government has made available $150 million on top of the existing money that we've put into the National plan to reduce violence against women and their children. As part of that $150 million, $20 million has been invested to increase the capacity of national initiatives that were already included in the plan to make sure that they are supercharged, because we didn't know at the start of this pandemic and we are still unsure of what kind of support women are going to need. But as restrictions are starting to be lifted we need to make sure that we are in a position where we have all the support services in place so that, if women need our support, they are able to get it. This could include such things as counselling support for families or at-risk people. It could also include men's behaviour change programs to make sure that we're providing not just short-term but medium- and longer-term responses to support men during this time. There is 1800RESPECT and making sure that there are sufficient resources to make sure that any woman who needs to access help is able to get it in a very timely manner. (Time expired)