Royal Commission into Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (16:35): My question is to the Premier. Who will be the standalone Minister for Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence, and will the government accept all the recommendations of the royal commission and, if so, when?

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (16:35): The Leader of the Opposition, had he familiarised himself with the government's response, the press release or indeed the lengthy press conference today, would be aware that I enunciated the government's position with respect to each of those issues, but I think it is important and worthy of repetition.

The first thing is that there are 136 recommendations today. We have accepted seven. We have chosen those seven very deliberately because those seven put in place the government architecture and the governance framework to then deal with the remaining 129 recommendations. Those include the acceptance of recommendation 1 for a standalone ministerial position. I have made clear in our remarks today that we don't just accept the recommendation, we intend to implement it, in effect, within weeks.

Secondly, with respect to the recommendation that speaks to a central government stewardship role, we accept that recommendation because it, too, allows us to respond to each of the other recommendations. There are two options available to the government in our assessment with regard to where that stewardship sits. The minister and I have been in active discussions about that since we received the report on Thursday. We intend to announce our determination in coming weeks, but we accept that recommendation.

The other recommendations that we have accepted today speak to a few different areas, one of which is the capacity to coordinate more broadly across government a long-term strategy to tackle this challenge, including the acceptance of the recommendation for a strategic plan for a five-year period to be put into place.

More than that, there are recommendations that speak to ensuring that lived experiences are central to all government deliberations. This is something that the minister has already been doing, including in advance of the royal commission, which is exceptionally important work. So we have already in place frameworks in government to ensure that is fed into the response. But we chose those seven recommendations deliberately because it is what sets us up for a response. Allow me to say this to the Leader of the Opposition: when all of those recommendations will be formally responded to by the government we have committed to do by the year's end, but do not expect us to wait until the year's end before we start doing some of the actions, particularly some of the practical things that are within our power now.

As a government, we are very conscious of the fact that we have a big legislative agenda to try to fulfill between now and the end of the parliamentary sitting year. We now add to that because there are reforms referenced in the royal commission that, if enacted, will require legislative change and the one I foreshadowed in the press conference today relates to a recommendation around how we regulate alcohol deliveries to the home. This is something that the Minister for Consumer and Business Affairs is already working on as we speak and we will have a submission coming into cabinet within the next couple of weeks for us to contemplate and then we, in turn, once that has gone through the appropriate cabinet process, would anticipate it is within this government's wherewithal to then translate that to legislation that we can bring to the parliament before the end of the year.

I cite that simply as an example that we are not going to wait until the end of the year to start enacting recommendations. Where we can deliver an iterative response that speaks to the degree of urgency around the issue we can, but it won't be at the expense of the quality of consideration that many of these recommendations apply, which again is relatively consistent with what the Victorian government did where the $3 billion figure the Leader of the Opposition interjects with was a figure that didn't come out until seven years after the royal commission's report was implemented. On this side of the house we treat the issue seriously by consideredness consistent with the recommendations made in the royal commission report, and will consider and continue to deal with it with the appropriate level of speed that does justice to the issue at hand.