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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-02-08 Daily Xml
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Domestic and Family Violence Crisis Accommodation

Mr TEAGUE (Heysen) (14:22): My question is to the Minister for Women and the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence. Is the government committed to delivering additional domestic and family violence crisis accommodation beds across South Australia? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr TEAGUE: On 6 March 2022, the previous government announced that $4 million had been allocated towards tripling the number of available crisis beds and tracking domestic violence offenders. It is unclear whether any of these funded beds have been delivered by the new government.

The Hon. K.A. HILDYARD (Reynell—Minister for Child Protection, Minister for Women and the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence, Minister for Recreation, Sport and Racing) (14:23): I thank the member for his question. I think we traversed this topic quite extensively during the estimates process, and I am certainly happy to do that again because crisis accommodation is a really important measure in our ongoing quest to prevent and help eradicate domestic family and sexual violence.

What I would first say in situating that question around crisis accommodation is that every effort in that shared quest to prevent and eradicate domestic violence is incredibly important across the four domains that are set out in the national plan, and that are also set out throughout the various initiatives, policy commitments and legislative program that we have as a government. Those four domains, of course, relate to prevention, intervention, response, recovery and healing. Crisis accommodation is a really important part of the response domain in terms of how we make sure that women who are not safe and who need to find security in accommodation are supported.

From memory, I think I took the member through all this data during estimates—but I will certainly do so again—because he asked a very similar question at that time. What I can say is that, first of all, our government took to the election a policy of making sure that we ring-fenced a proportion of public housing for women escaping family, domestic or sexual violence, and that policy is certainly progressing. We have already allocated a number of properties in relation to that particular part of our crisis accommodation and secure housing for women in the extensive policy we have.

I can also tell the member that on 6 September last year, together with the YWCA and the Minister for Human Services, we were there when they launched, or turned the sod, on their project to construct 24 long-term rental units in Hutt Street for women and children affected by domestic, family and sexual violence. We understand those will be completed in 2025.

We continue to provide funding. We have committed almost $7 million to extend the domestic and family violence crisis accommodation program, so that is certainly rolling out. We have crisis accommodation properties right across the state. We have a cluster in the northern metropolitan area, in the southern metropolitan area, and in regional areas: the Murray, the Hills, the Limestone Coast, Whyalla, Ceduna and Port Lincoln. Right across the state we are making sure we are providing crisis accommodation. As I said, we are also creating additional capacity for crisis accommodation through ring-fencing that proportion of public housing.

What I can say in answer to the member's question is that I think we have far exceeded those commitments we made at the time of the election.

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