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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-10-16 Daily Xml
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Domestic and Family Violence

The Hon. J.S. LEE (15:20): My question is directed to the Minister for Human Services and is about domestic violence initiatives. Can the minister please advise this council about the government's election commitment to hold a domestic violence round table?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (15:20): I thank the honourable member for her question. The government has continued our regional round table visits, and I am pleased to advise that on Friday of last week we held one in the City of Whyalla—no, sorry, the week before last was the City of Whyalla and last week was in Port Lincoln. I would like to thank both the honourable local members, the member for Giles and the member for Flinders, respectively, for attending.

Once again, the event was attended by a range of service providers and government agencies, including South Australia Police, the Department for Correctional Services, the Department for Child Protection, as well as a range of non-government organisations that are active in this space. It was also attended by my colleague the Assistant Minister for Domestic and Family Violence Prevention, Carolyn Power.

As has been the format with the other round tables, we have consulted on a suite of policies, which I am very pleased were delivered in full from the recent budget. The feedback that we have received from regions is that not only do they appreciate the attendance of ministers for a full day but also the opportunity to have input into this important process.

Some of the feedback we had is relatively common to the other round tables we have had, and some of it is also unique to the particular regions. What we find in regional areas is that, while resources on the ground can sometimes be not as prevalent—not as many programs—as in metropolitan Adelaide, service providers work extremely effectively together to manage issues locally for the best outcomes.

Some of the emerging themes from our regional round tables is that we need to have a greater focus on perpetrators, particularly in relation to potential crisis accommodation. That is an area that has been neglected. As people who are familiar with issues in this space for many decades would know, domestic and family violence prevention has been led by women, often for women, and we now need to appreciate the role of men in this space and how we need to focus potential interventions on the perpetrators.

In addition, some of the initiatives of the government more recently have been highly welcomed. The Attorney-General has released the policy for consultation in relation to repeated breaches of intervention orders. We did have feedback that a number of workers in this space and some victims have felt that intervention orders are inadequate, because unless the breaches have some impact then it just adds to their problems.

The disclosure scheme, which commenced on 2 October, has also been welcomed as an additional tool in the range of areas that we can help to address this issue. What we suspect is going to take place is that a lot of people who have not yet had contact with the domestic violence system will come forward to make those applications to see whether a relationship, or indeed the relationship of someone who they are concerned about, is potentially dangerous.

We also discussed the issues of confidentiality both as an issue in regions, because obviously everybody knows each other in regions, but we also have some pretty mature information-sharing guidelines, which should address some of the matters so that agencies can share information between them. The matter of keeping victims informed by bail and release was also discussed, as well as the particular safety hub models that might apply to various regions. I thank everybody for their involvement and their attendance and look forward to further policy development in this space.

The PRESIDENT: The Hon. Mr Pangallo, an opportunity to redeem yourself.

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