Page 3199 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 20 August 2019
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Commission is a partner in delivering this pilot program which provides early intervention and support for pregnant women and new families at risk.
This year’s budget announced that from July 2020 the family violence unit funding will transition out of the safer families funding package. But I want to be very clear that this does not mean that the government will stop providing to Legal Aid the funding that it needs to support people experiencing family violence. Helping these vulnerable people continues to be an utmost priority for me and for this government, as well obviously as the Deputy Chief Minister in her key leadership role in this area.
I can assure the Assembly that our focus on this work has not wavered. The Deputy Chief Minister and I have both met with the CEO of Legal Aid ACT and we will continue to support the front-line services that they offer with funding. The levy being allocated to new initiatives represents a decision to do more and be more creative in the ways that we address preventing and responding to family violence. We are taking this year to look at what works with this initiative, what, if anything, can be done better but, most importantly, what is best for the community. That is and always should be the primary consideration of how we make decisions about where we spend public money.
In closing, I reiterate the government’s gratitude for the commitment and for the passion of the hardworking staff at the Legal Aid Commission’s family violence unit. The family violence unit has played and will continue to play a critical role in ensuring that the territory’s justice system is as timely, transparent and accessible for victims of domestic and family violence as our city continues to grow and evolve and it will continue to do so.
MR HANSON (Murrumbidgee) (4.41): The reality—and the Attorney-General has skipped around it—is that this government in this budget is cutting hundreds of thousands of dollars in staff salaries from front-line staff. These are job cuts—as simple as that—at the front line of domestic and family violence. They are providing essential services for women and for families experiencing domestic and family violence.
They are very cruel cuts, and if there was just one reason not to support this budget this would surely be it. They are cruel cuts and they are going to hurt some of the most vulnerable people in the ACT. They are utterly indefensible. This government has put forward no coherent reason for these cuts. We have heard words like “re-profiling” and “innovation”. That is not an answer to cutting jobs at the front-line for family and domestic violence.
The Canberra Liberals call on this government to restore this funding. We call on them to do it as a matter of urgency and provide the certainty that the Legal Aid Commission needs to do its job to provide the support that these jobs currently provide to hundreds of women seeking support as they flee domestic violence. These cuts are mean spirited. They are ill considered. It is an out-of-touch decision.
Let me emphasise this by a press release that I was provided, dated 20 August, and forwarded, from what I can see, to every MLA. It is from Winnunga Nimmityjah, released by Julie Tongs, the CEO:
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