Marise Payne (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

PAYNE () (): I acknowledge and thank my colleagues for their indulgence. This is a very important day not just here but across Australia and our region. I want to record the strong support of the opposition, in this place, for the statement and initiative of this debate.

Our focus as a government on women's safety was a strong one, as demonstrated in the budget of 2022-23. We clearly said that we wanted to create an Australia that is free from violence against women and children, and where women are safe and respected, by focusing on the four pillars of prevention, early intervention, response and recovery. Our policies and funding followed that focus. We had a specific Minister for Women's Safety in our government. My friend and colleague Senator the Hon. Anne Ruston is unable to be here this afternoon and I want to acknowledge her contribution.

I had the extraordinary privilege of hosting, chairing perhaps, a significant number of women's round tables in my previous ministerial role. They were held in Australian capital cities and regional areas across the states and territories, some of them forced online by the invidious nature of COVID. It was an extraordinary privilege to hear dozens and dozens of Australian women. These were immensely powerful opportunities for them to share their views and experiences from vastly different walks of life across our country. More times than I care to remember, disclosures were made, at those round tables, of individual and family experiences and, inevitably, sometimes for the first time. Everybody would stop in their tracks and realise that we all know someone who has experienced family and domestic violence in their lives. For many, that is a confronting fact to accept.

Today is an opportunity for me to thank the people who participated in those round tables, who were so open and frank with us, who challenged me and those who attended. It's also an opportunity to thank those who work to support women and their children across Australia and victims-survivors across this country, as Senator Pocock did in his remarks. I also thank the many frontline workers and organisations that do everything and anything they can to support and protect women and their children and to prevent violence. Many of us here work with them and support them in our communities. Their work is often not acknowledged, and I want to do that now.

Across New South Wales and as a minister, I have met so many people whose lives are committed to this issue. I know Patty Kinnersly and Moo Baulch were here in parliament this week, and I want to acknowledge them and their work with Our Watch and the previous chair, Natasha Stott Despoja, for what they do. I want to acknowledge ANROWS for their vital research and I want to acknowledge the refuges that exist across our communities to protect women who have nowhere else to go. In New South Wales and perhaps elsewhere—I'm not sure how far they have spread—there's the organisation Women's Community Shelters, the initiative of Annabelle Daniel and so many others, including people like Yvonne Keane in Western Sydney.

There are refuges like The Haven in Penrith, such an important service in our community. I acknowledge one member of the board, my very good friend who is actually the mayor of Penrith, Tricia Hitchen. She has gone from police inspector in Western Sydney to a board member of a refuge. She has gone from pursuing perpetrators to ensure that they paid the price for their attacks on vulnerable women and children to being able to support women and children who have nowhere else to go. Tricia doesn't turn a hair at the thought that she needs to pick up the toilet paper supplies or the cereal or whatever it might on any day be for The Haven. That is nothing to her because it delivers for those women and children, and I'm immensely proud of what she does in my community.

As human services minister I initiated a program in the Department of Human Services in relation to the prevention of family and domestic violence and support for victims and perpetrators, called Enough. I was very proud of that. At the moment I'm the deputy chair of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Parliamentary Standards, and I serve on that committee with my colleagues Senator Chandler, Nola Marino and others. The committee is chaired by Sharon Claydon. After we finish with our parliamentary standards report, I want to make sure that we take steps to address support for people in this place that experience family and domestic violence: the workers, the staff, the contractors and others. (Time expired)