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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-05-15 Daily Xml
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Domestic and Family Violence

The Hon. J.S. LEE (14:34): Thank you, Mr President. My question is to the Minister for Human Services about the government's progress on addressing domestic and family violence. Can the minister please provide an update to the council about the government's election commitment to deliver new crisis accommodation for South Australians escaping violence in their homes?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (14:35): I thank the honourable member for her question. Excuse my voice; I'd rather be in bed. It gives me great pleasure to discuss another tranche in the delivery of our commitments in this very important space: the much anticipated locations of the 40 new crisis beds for domestic and family violence.

We took a rather specific policy to the election of 40—it is often called beds; it probably should be more known as properties, and for 20 to be located in metropolitan South Australia and for the other two lots of 10 to be in two regional locations. The advice we received from the sector, particularly through our roundtable approach, was that probably those specific large numbers of 10 for regional areas would be too many for most regions' needs.

We also have relied on data to advise us about where those locations should be. As I have spoken about previously, we had a statewide round table; that was within our first 30 days. We have had a series of regional round tables where we have been able to discuss all elements of our package, particularly the safety hubs as well, and we have been very deeply involved in receiving that feedback and ensuring that that informs our process going forward.

In, I think, November-December 2018 there were some first response consultations held jointly between Housing and the Office for Women that also looked at these matters. One of the things that the member for Elder, Carolyn Power, and myself heard when we were at these round tables was that people often said, 'Well, we don't know what to do with the perpetrators, so why don't we remove the perpetrators?' So that again has been factored into the resulting announcement in terms of what we should do.

The 40 places will be Housing Authority properties that will have security upgrades to ensure that they are safe for women and families to live in independently. Some of the properties will also be available to house the perpetrator, because what we know in this space is that there is often not a line of sight on perpetrators, particularly if the police are not involved and there is not an immediate intervention order. So we need to be able to know where they are to manage the safety risk.

This has been very well received, particularly by people with lived experience—and I am grateful for the two advocates who were part of our press conference. Their language is very much that the perpetrators need to take responsibility for their actions. This provides an opportunity for workers to intervene in that situation and to start providing counselling, depending on the level of risk, of course; sometimes the police are involved at that point, but we also believe that there are earlier points of intervention that would be appropriate for when people contact the crisis line and things haven't escalated to that particularly unsafe end.

The locations are northern and southern Adelaide, the Murray Mallee, Eyre, the eastern region, and particularly the regional centres of Berri, Murray Bridge, Ceduna, Whyalla and Port Lincoln. So we look forward—75 per cent of those places will be delivered by the end of this calendar year, with the rest of them by 30 April 2020.

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