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

Domestic violence shelters in Queensland are at breaking point. Frontline services are struggling to find space for women and children who are escaping violence. With a 15 per cent rise in DV, it is only going to get worse. Crisis accommodation is a critical safety net for women and children when they leave. It provides a temporary sanctuary in the initial dangerous phase after escaping while they seek support and start to rebuild their lives and keep themselves safe. But the housing crisis in Queensland means that many women and children cannot find somewhere to move to after that crisis phase. They're staying in refuges for months or years, because there is nowhere else to go. This is putting further pressure on the drastically underfunded women's safety sector. The sector is dipping into limited funds to put women up in hotels because crisis centres are full. They're referring women to refuges and accommodation in other towns, away from work and school and their support networks. They're having to turn women away, forcing them back into unsafe relationships or to live in their car or a tent.

Across Queensland people who are barely getting by are facing rent hikes of hundreds of dollars and no option to find another home. The Queensland government's decision yesterday to restrict rent rises to once a year will make next to no difference. Women have an impossible choice: stay in an unsafe home or leave and put themselves and their kids at the mercy of a system with inadequate support, stretched DV services and housing shortages. Single mums are particularly vulnerable, and they are making sacrifices every day. Since the Gillard government's cruel decision a decade ago, single parents lose about $100 in support each week when their youngest child turns eight. There is no logic to this. It's just an arbitrary cut-off that makes life harder for single mums and their kids. It's a change that can tip people into homelessness, and the government must act to fix it—restore the single parenting payment for children up to 16 years of age, raise the rate, make an investment in crisis accommodation and affordable housing to actually fix the problem, and fully fund frontline services.