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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-11-13 Daily Xml
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Domestic Violence Accommodation

The Hon. I. PNEVMATIKOS (14:58): Of the number of beds which are to be used by perpetrators, will these be located in the same place as other victims or in the same house, and can the minister assure us of the safety of victims living near perpetrators?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (14:58): This entire process is driven by safety and safety assessment. We have had very deep consultation—I think it was a three-day consultation late last year between the Office for Women and Housing and the specialist service providers and other housing providers—to determine the parameters.

Often in the housing sector there is talked about a housing-first approach. Certainly, when it comes to the specialist domestic service providers, they talk about a safety-first approach. There will be safety assessments done for each of these particular situations and cases to ensure that people are, as far as possible, protected from perpetrators.

The issue that the specialist sector has talked to us about is that what happens under the existing systems is that nobody actually has line of sight over the perpetrator. What is standard practice at the moment is that the family leaves the home, usually to a shelter, sometimes to a hotel or sometimes to some other form of crisis or transitional accommodation. No service has line of sight over the perpetrator unless potentially the police have been involved. We anticipate that perpetrators may be removed where there is a lesser level of crisis within that particular situation and that there will be intervention with that perpetrator. It will not be used in the highest-risk situations, where the perpetrator is really very agitated.

What we are hoping to do with the entire sector, which I spoke about quite recently in terms of the Berri safety hub, and the feedback that I have received directly from visiting them, is that we are moving situations upstream; that is, families are self-managing better because they have the tools to enable them to manage processes and, in some cases, get legal advice, counselling and a whole range of tools that they may need to manage the situation so that they don't get into that crisis situation where the police need to intervene and where families need to be removed. The whole reorientation of the system is all about safety as its priority.

The PRESIDENT: The Hon. Ms Pnevmatikos, a further supplementary.

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