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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 5 Hansard (15 May) . . Page.. 1560 ..

MS REILLY (continuing):

It comes from relationships that are not working and a community that is not supporting families, is not supporting both men and women to ensure that we could have more equality of relationships, not just within the workplace but also within the home.

It is not just a matter of looking at legislation. We actually have to look at a broad range of responses. We in the ACT can be proud of our long history of support for strong legislation on domestic violence. We have strong State action which is quite often negated or reduced by Federal Government action. Consider the cuts in legal aid. One of the issues is women having access to legal aid. In cases of domestic violence, with the complexity of a number of issues, you are dealing with both Commonwealth and State legislation which cuts across some of the little boxes that legal aid dollars are put into.

If you are looking at trying to protect your house so that you and your children can continue to live in some safety, you go through the Family Court. If you are looking at taking out a domestic violence order in relation to the perpetrator, you go to State legislation. Obtaining legal aid dollars and funding at times is extremely difficult for a number of women in this area, even though the attitudes of the court, the police and others in the area have improved over the years. Currently, there is a fee of $65 for people to access legal aid. This fee, for a number of women, is too high. They are so poor and so disadvantaged, and have so little money, that they cannot afford the fee of $65 to be able to use a legal aid lawyer at the time of their court case. Consequently, you have women appearing in court without legal representation, often facing a male with more resources who is able to appear with a lawyer, and this immediately puts the woman at a disadvantage. Women, and quite often children, continue to live in fear and insecurity because they cannot obtain the necessary legal advice and the legal outcome that they require to live in safety in our community.

Another aspect of domestic violence that is not always considered as being directly applicable is access to housing. It is easy for women who have housing or who have managed to get a property settlement; but for women who have had to leave a home because it is so unsafe, women who have to move into refuges, it is quite often extremely difficult to find any exit from those refuges. At times women end up living in refuges for a lot longer than they were originally set up for. I think it is important that we register that there is need for women to be able to exit refuges or medium-term accommodation. There has to be more provided for public housing to assist these women. There is also the question of access to funds for emergency accommodation in particular times of dire need, and last year the budget for this was cut.

It is not just a legal response that we need to domestic violence. We need a coordinated, cooperative response across a number of areas. We need more education, more assistance to young men and young women when they are growing up, particularly for young men to help them deal with anger. For a number of them, because of modelling they may have received within their own homes or the community, their way of dealing with anger is to hit out. Quite often the person who suffers from this is their partner or the children of that marriage or relationship. These are the people who suffer. We need to look at ways of providing more assistance and more education for young men in particular, so that we can reduce the amount of domestic violence within our community.

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