Page 187 - Week 02 - Thursday, 25 May 1989
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The Government will also be undertaking a women's budget statement which will be carried out by the womens unit in my department. The women's budget statement will be aimed at addressing in a real way the economic impact of the Government's programs on women and also dealing with specific programs for women. So I think that, unless women's issues are dealt with in the same way as all other issues - that is, in their economic context so that they can have some real outcomes - we will not get very far. So I see the women's budget statement as a very important tool in the further improvement of the status of women in the ACT.
Of course a great many women choose to remain at home. The position of women in the home is also one where there has not been true equality. I draw members' attention to the fact that women are overwhelmingly more likely to suffer domestic violence than any other group.
The term "domestic violence" is one with which I take some issue. If one thinks of terms such as domestic architecture, domestic economies and so on it is a way of saying that this is a fairly small-scale thing, that it is not all that serious, that it is just a domestic arrangement. So I prefer to call domestic violence what it really is, which is criminal assault. If we were to look at it in those terms I think it would be very clear that these kinds of criminal acts cannot be allowed to continue against one class in the community, and that class is women.
It must be treated as a real crime, as a life threatening crime, and very often it results in murder, as we have seen in the ACT on any number of occasions. So the Government has undertaken to continue the funding to the Domestic Violence Crisis Service. We will be sticking with that promise; there is no question about that. But further than that, as we promised during our election campaign, we will be looking to establish a new refuge, one which deals exclusively with women victims of domestic violence.
I do not know whether members are aware, but it certainly was the case over the Christmas-New Year period just past that numbers of women from the Domestic Violence Crisis Service had nowhere to go. The numbers of criminal assaults in the home were such that those women were sent to motels to get them out of immediate danger. They were accommodated in motels where there were no counselling services available to them. It was a very poor response to a very serious and life threatening situation.
So we will be looking to fund that refuge, and we will also be looking to the Federal Government to share in the funding of that. It is the Government's contention that women must have a real choice over whether they wish to remain in the home or whether they wish to take part in the paid work force. Part of having a real choice is access to affordable and appropriate child-care.
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