Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I want to remind everyone in this building that there is not just an epidemic of men's violence against women; there is an active femicide against First Nations women and girls, who are overrepresented in every statistic of harm conceivable. The only way we can understand this harm is by naming the true source of this violence: a culture and system of racial, sexual and gender based violence which has normalised the violent treatment of black women. I see the impacts of this every day in the many women and girls who come to my office for help. These are women who have been horribly abused by their white partners, who have no housing after being priced out by white settlers, whose children are being taken from them by the white man's legal system and who have been turned away from legal services that are stretched to the limit because the white politicians refuse to fund them. In the words of Aunty Vickie Roach:

It's like we are refugees in our own country, on our own land. Hunted by coppers and racists alike …

We all know that the government funding is by far not enough and that hundreds of millions of dollars of additional funding is needed. We need to fully resource Aboriginal legal services, which are inundated by requests. They are the only way for our women and girls to accept support in a culturally safe way. This national crisis needs to be addressed today, and, if you don't, then you have blood on your hands, Labor.