Page 3181 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 18 October 2022
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
upon! Shame on this government for turning its back on needy families, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families. In so many areas, the goal appears to be to create an appearance of committing to reform whilst carefully managing expectation so that little real reform needs to happen. (Second speaking period taken.)
When it comes to the prevention of domestic and family violence, I witness the same concerns I see across my other shadow portfolios. When the safer families levy was announced by the ACT government in 2016, I and many members of the Canberra community welcomed the much-needed investment in our underfunded frontline domestic and family violence services. The government announced that the levy would directly fund a range of new programs aimed at improving outcomes for victims of domestic violence and their families. Instead, we saw $2.4 million of the safer families levy spent on training all 21,000 ACT government staff, at the expense of frontline service providers.
With four consecutive annual increases taking the safer families levy from $30 to $50 per household, I asked the government, during hearings, exactly how much of the enlarged levy would be allocated to frontline community services, as opposed to frontline government services. The answer I received:
… it is not possible to provide the requested breakdown of the Safer Families Levy component allocated across the identified categories.
My fear is that the ACT government will continue to pull much-needed funding away from frontline services when we are living at a time when there are more vulnerable people in our community than ever before. For years, I have been advocating for more investment in this space. I have continually fought for more investment in women’s refuges and in organisations that support at-risk men, but to no avail. At least this Labor-Greens government outright confirmed its lack of concern in a written response to a question I asked during estimates hearing:
The 2022-23 Budget does not provide any new funding under the domestic and family violence portfolio to these frontline services.
Not only is there no new funding for women’s refuges and men’s organisations but there is no new funding for frontline community services found anywhere in the safer families portfolio—only a reallocation of earlier funding that was provided for the Canberra Rape Crisis Centre and the Domestic Violence Crisis Service. How much longer can this situation be sustained? Canberrans rightly expect that their payment of the annual safer families levy will create increased safety for those directly impacted by domestic violence.
A final example of how this government and this budget both fall short comes from my shadow portfolio of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs. In July 2020 Ms Julie Tongs, CEO of Winnunga, wrote to the former Attorney-General seeking a detailed, comprehensive and independent inquiry into the justice system and its contact with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community members. This letter led to a government roundtable of Indigenous leaders on 25 March last year.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video