National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children

The Hon. G.A. KANDELAARS (14:55): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for the Status of Women a question about the launch of the Second Action Plan 2013-2016 of the National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children 2010-2022.

Leave granted.

The Hon. G.A. KANDELAARS: Violence against women and their children is a crime that affects the whole community and everybody is likely to know somebody whose life has been changed by violence. In Australia, one in three women have experienced physical violence and almost one in five have experienced sexual violence since the age of 15. This violence against women, sadly, also comes not only at a physical and emotional cost, but at an estimated national economic cost of $15.5 billion annually. Can the minister update the chamber on the launch of the Second Action Plan 2013-2016 of the National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children 2010-2022, which was held on Friday the 27^th?

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (Minister for Employment, Higher Education and Skills, Minister for Science and Information Economy, Minister for the Status of Women, Minister for Business Services and Consumers) (14:57): I thank the honourable member for his most important question. Last Friday, I was very pleased to be able to attend the launch of the Second Action Plan 2013-2016 called, 'Moving Forward of the National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children,' which was held in Manly, Sydney.

The National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children 2010-2022 was released on 15 February 2011, following endorsement from the Council of Australian Governments (COAG). The national plan brings together government efforts across the nation to make a real and sustained reduction in the levels of violence against women.

The second action plan takes stock of what has worked well in the first three years of the national plan and consolidates the evidence base for the effectiveness of those strategies and actions, with an emphasis on developing practical initiatives that support community safety and awareness, supporting and assisting victims of violence and deterring violence.

The action plan spans from 2013 to 2016 and describes 26 practical actions that all governments have agreed are important to reduce violence against women and their children. Through these actions, we are doing more to drive whole of community action to prevent violence through strategies such as respectful relationships education and improved media engagement; secondly, to ensure that the experiences of, particularly, Aboriginal women, women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, women with a disability, a diverse range of women, are incorporated in our responses through awareness raising, training and prevention activities; and also, to support innovative services and integrated systems through improved information sharing such as we have in South Australia through the Family Safety Framework and reviewing domestic violence related deaths.

Another initiative is about improving perpetrator interventions by building the evidence base and the implementation of national outcome standards. Finally, we continue to build the evidence base by expanding the quality and quantity of national research on violence against women and their children and conducting every four years the ABS Personal Safety Survey and the National Community Attitudes Survey.

I am pleased to belong to a government that is very committed to actions and initiatives which target domestic violence. Already South Australia is well along the path set out in the second action plan through initiatives started under the first action plan, and the South Australian government's right to a safety agenda includes things like: the statewide rollout of the Family Safety Framework, which seeks to ensure that services to families at high risk of violence are dealt with in a more structured and systematic way, through government and non-government agencies sharing information and supporting families to access services; the establishment of a community focus; violence against women collaborations, which provides an opportunity for the development of local regional responses to women experiencing rape and sexual assault, domestic and family violence and also homelessness due to violence; partnering with other jurisdictions in the cross-border justice scheme to support women and children experiencing domestic and family violence, rape and sexual assault and who are living on the APY lands; and, also maintaining a senior research officer, domestic violence position, in partnership with the South Australian Coroner's Office to research and investigate open and closed deaths relating to domestic violence.

I am very proud to be part of a government that is working hard to ensure that South Australian women and their children live free from violence in safe communities, and this is a time when the federal government is, as we know, slashing and burning funding for services that affect those most in need. We see cuts to services, such as National Aboriginal Violence Prevention, legal services, legal aid commissions, and the community legal centres. Community legal centres are already reporting that they have to turn away 20 per cent of their applicants, many of whom who have already been unsuccessful in obtaining legal aid, and these further cuts will cause issues in relation to domestic violence cases where victims could be forced to confront their aggressor in court without a lawyer to assist.

As we keep doing on this side, we urge the federal government to put their money where their mouth is and to reinstate funding for services for homelessness, disability and Aboriginal culturally and linguistically diverse women, areas that the second action plan focuses on as a priority. I certainly look forward to continuing to work with my counterparts in other jurisdictions and the federal minister assisting, and to progress the rollout of the second action plan. I think I am the only minister from the original first action plan under which work was initiated under the former Labor government, through the Hon. Tanya Plibersek. I am the only one left standing from the original group. It has been a great pleasure to have been able to participate in the first phase and now the second phase with the current Liberal government. This is important work and I very much enjoy the commitment given to this and the way it continues to be rolled out.

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!