Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Newcastle for her question. There are few people in this parliament who have done more to stand up for victims and survivors of family, domestic and sexual violence than the member for Newcastle, and all of us acknowledge that work. Too many Australians have experienced family, domestic and sexual violence, and too many of them have experienced financial abuse and coercive control. It's particularly bad when that happens in the private sector where debts are run up by perpetrators of violence, but we know that it also happens in government systems. The social security system, which is supposed to protect and support victims of violence, should never be able to be used by perpetrators to financially control or coerce victims of domestic violence.

So we will be introducing legislation later this week to expand the special circumstances debt waiver in social security. That means that Services Australia will be able to take a more commonsense and more compassionate approach. Where there are debts run up by perpetrators of violence, they should not be left for victims of violence to pay. We've seen examples where perpetrators of violence have run up thousands of dollars worth of debts and then walked away and left the victim of the violence to suffer the consequences of that.

But, of course, this is not the only thing that the Albanese Labor government is doing. No government has invested more in frontline services. No government has invested more in programs working with men to stop them using violence. No government has invested more in adolescent boys or children who have been the victims of domestic violence, to make sure that they're not going to go on and perpetrate violence in the future. We've introduced the leaving violence payment and made it permanent—up to $5,000 to support victims of violence as they're leaving home—because too often we've asked, 'Why doesn't she go?' when the reality is that she had no choice in the matter.

There's $1.2 billion in emergency and transitional housing, and I have to compliment the Minister for Housing for this work. There's 10 days paid domestic violence leave. There are changes to family law that make the system safer and simpler. Too often we've seen the family law system also used against victims of violence. There's record legal services funding, and I have to particularly draw out the $800 million extra funding for family violence legal services.

All of us, I'm sure, agree that one victim of domestic, family or sexual violence is one too many, and all of us across the parliament acknowledge that we have a role as parliamentarians to lead change in this area, and our state and territory colleagues have a role. Every single Australian can play a role, too, in keeping people safe where they should be safest—in their own homes.

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