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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Emergency Management (Senator McAllister) to a question without notice I asked today relating to violence against women.

We have just seen today the tabling of the first inaugural report into whether or not the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children is meeting its objectives. I have just been at the Press Club and heard the Family Domestic and Sexual Violence Commissioner speak to these really important matters, so I took the opportunity to ask the government. The commissioner herself said today that the women's safety sector is already—I will just get the words right—buckling. She acknowledged that. I know that, but here is the commissioner acknowledging that the sector is already buckling. She said that when there is an increase in reporting, frontline services need more support to meet increased demand. I too have been saying that for quite some time. Unfortunately, what we have seen this year are the rates of violence and in particular the rates of the murder of women increase.

I am a big supporter of the national plan, but it is clear to me there's not enough funding to make it effective, and that should be fixed. It should have been fixed years ago. I ask the government today: when will you commit to fully funding the frontline support sector that handles family, domestic and sexual violence that helps women and children in particular when they seek to flee violence and to stay safe and start fresh, like they deserve to?

I got a nice recap of the things the government has done, and they are all fine. I didn't actually get an answer to my question, which was: when will you give them the money they want so they can help everyone who needs it? I did get a bit frustrated, and I try to stay calm in this place, but we have question time so we can get answers. I suppose it is called 'question time' and not 'answer time' for a reason. But I was very disappointed to not get an answer on whether the government will increase funding. They have added some funding but they are at about two-thirds of what the sector says it needs.

So is that one in three women who aren't going to be helped because this government won't fund them? Why can you find money for property investor concessions and for nuclear submarines and tax cuts? Why can you find money for those things and not find money for frontline services to the amount they are asking for? I genuinely don't understand what message is not getting through, and why that opportunity to really help people when they most need it is not being grabbed by this government and then trumpeted about. We would all shower them in fanfare like they deserve. This is an issue that needs proper funding. Once again, unfortunately, we haven't seen the government commit to what women want them to do on this matter.

I also asked the minister specifically about sexual violence support services because, as we know and as the commissioner herself acknowledged today, often sexual violence is left out of this conversation. But unfortunately, we have seen an 11 per cent increase in sexual violence in the past year, and we know the sexual violence support services are even more underfunded than the family and domestic violence support services. They are literally and figuratively the poor cousin, so I asked the minister: will there be any specific funding for sexual violence support services? I got some references to some of the good changes that have been coming out of this government in relation to some family law reforms and some sexual violence justice actions, which the Greens have supported, but I didn't get an answer to: will you fund those frontline rape crisis services? It was extremely frustrating to not be told why not.

The other question I asked of the minister built upon the excellent work of my colleague Senator Dorinda Cox, who then initiated an inquiry into missing and murdered First Nations women that ran for many, many months and had incredibly powerful evidence and just culminated in the report last week. I asked whether or not the government would commit one of the suggestions made by my colleague to have an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander violence prevention framework for men and boys, because we know that community led responses are what can work. We know also that the rates of violence against First Nations women is even worse than the rates of violence against non-Indigenous women. I didn't get an answer to that either. We got some nice recognition of Senator Cox's work, but, again, we're not asking these questions just to have fun; we're asking because we want answers. We will not stop asking for frontline services to get the funding they need to help everyone that seeks it.

We also want decent money for prevention work because it's clear that we will just keep chasing our tail. We've got some good prevention initiatives but, likewise, they are underfunded. The saturation model in Victoria is an excellent model that we should see replicated nationally, but it's going to take money and we are still waiting for the government to put that on the table.

Question agreed to.