Domestic and Family Violence

The Hon. J.S. LEE (15:07): My question is to the Minister for Human Services and is about the government's 2018 budget commitment for domestic violence prevention. Can the minister please provide an update to the council about the delivery of important initiatives to address domestic violence through the recent state budget?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (15:07): I thank the honourable member for her question and for her interest in this area. Indeed, I think she attended recently one of the many great organisations that we have in South Australia that assists CALD women, who clearly are one of the cohorts that we are interested in protecting against the scourge of domestic violence.

The state government, through its 2018-19 budget, committed $11.9 million over four years for a range of measures in South Australia to support women and children at risk and to deliver on our pre-election commitments. In particular, we have had two of those initiatives that have recently gone live: first of all, the personal protection app; and the 24/7 Domestic Violence Crisis Line went live as of yesterday.

The Domestic Violence Crisis Line has been operating in South Australia for—I think it is—29 years. The after-hours service has been until now diverted to the generic Homelessness Gateway where clearly we have excellent staffing but in terms of the gateway they don't necessarily have the same expertise as the specialist hotline. So we are very pleased in South Australia that anybody who needs assistance through that domestic violence hotline is able to get assistance 24/7. That particular funding commitment was some $1.66 million.

The Women's Safety Services South Australia is responsible for operating that service. The budget obviously was delivered in September, and it took some time to recruit and train the staff, but we are very pleased that they have managed to do that in a short space of a couple of months. We also have the domestic violence app which is able to link at-risk women to it. That is through funding of $155,000. We implemented an existing app that has been tested as a safety tool for people in these situations. The funding in itself means that women who contact the DVD Crisis Line will have access to the app as part of a safety plan developed with clients by the service.

We have also provided funding through our other initiatives for the coalition of women's Domestic and Aboriginal Family Violence Services, which is $624,000 over four years. We are working through the locations for the new crisis accommodation, the interest-free loans, and also the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme which started in early October, and that has had a number of applications as well. We are very proud of this range of initiatives in this space and continue to roll them out in close consultation with the sector and people with lived experience, and I look forward to reporting back to the parliament on other initiatives as they roll out.