Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

I rise to take note of item No. 21, the report of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee entitled Inquiry into domestic violence with particular regard to violence against women and their children, which was tabled out of session.

When this most recent inquiry into domestic violence was first set up, I spoke in this place about how it was important that we saw action on the recommendations of previous inquiries into this matter by government. We were worried that this new inquiry would simply give the government further excuse to delay any meaningful action and then ignore the recommendations anyway, as they have done, sadly, with many previous inquiries into this important issue. What we didn't expect to see was the Senate committee deciding to end the inquiry months early without any actual hearings and without even calling for submissions. This process has been botched beyond belief. As I say, whilst we were concerned about the possible distraction effect this inquiry might have, once it was actually set up it should have done a proper job. The Greens were not part of the decision to halt the inquiry, and we certainly would have made dissenting remarks, but in ignoring both previous domestic violence inquiry recommendations and shutting this most recent inquiry down early the government just keeps on showing that women are not a priority for it.

Sadly, we've seen rates of domestic violence continue to increase during the global pandemic. We've not seen any additional funding to a meaningful amount to those frontline services. In particular, there has been no funding to enable them to transition to a different model of service based on the physical distancing that folk have been undertaking. There has been an absolute continued tin ear by this government as to the scale of the problem and its ability to actually help by kicking in some meaningful dough. There have been a few small bits of money poured in here and there, which are always welcome, but it is not enough. The scale of this epidemic is not being recognised in this government's response. Sadly, we're used to women being ignored by this government. We've lost more jobs than the blokes, but there's still no plan for us. The recovery that's been promoted by the government is mostly for male dominated industries. They're shutting down JobKeeper early for childcare workers, who are mostly women. We get that, but it still doesn't make it okay.

I acknowledge that there has now been a fresh inquiry set up by the government. We're a bit worried that this will descend into simply self-congratulations by the government because, frankly, no-one else is congratulating them for the job they've done in tackling domestic violence, and the terms of reference read an awful lot like they want someone to do that, and it's going to have to be them. So we remain concerned that this will be yet another inquiry where the government will continue to ignore previous inquiries.

As I do every sitting period, tomorrow we will vote again on a motion that notes how many women have been killed by violence since the last time we were in this chamber. That number never stays static; it always goes up. Each time we beg for the government to do what's needed to try and stem this tide: to increase the funding to frontline services, to have a national register of deaths—we don't even have that; that's up to a volunteer organisation to compile—and to have proper police training. We've seen, sadly, some recent examples of very inappropriate police conduct in dealing with women who have sought assistance and help through the justice system and who have once again been denied it.

There are so many things this government could do, and I'm worried that it just set up this new inquiry because it was embarrassed that it shut the last inquiry down too soon. Anyway, we will participate, as we always do. The sector will participate, as it always does, spending its valuable time saying the same old stuff. Please don't ignore them this time.

Question agreed to.