Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) one in four women and one in 14 men have experienced violence by an intimate partner since the age of 15 as of 2024;

(b) 37 women were killed by a current or former intimate partner in 2024 according to the Status for Women Report Card;

(c) the Report of the Rapid Review of Prevention Approaches, Unlocking the Prevention Potential: accelerating action to end family, domestic and sexual violence provided the Government with 21 recommendations which have not yet all been responded to; and

(d) the Government has made some meaningful commitments including a $4.7 billion investment into a range of preventative measures and support services; and

(2) calls on the Government to:

(a) urgently respond to all recommendations put forward by the Rapid Review; and

(b) expand the eligibility requirements of the Family Violence Crisis Payment to allow for victim-survivors to receive the support they need.

We are living in a national crisis. One in four women and one in 14 men have experienced violence by an intimate partner. According to the Status of Women Report Card, 37 women were killed by a current or former partner in 2024 alone. These statistics no longer shock us. They are there now in the community. But it doesn't make them any less devastating. They have become expected and, for far too many people, a reality. Police commanders in my local area, where sometimes people think, 'Oh, this violence doesn't happen,' tell me that up to 50 per cent of their time is spent on domestic violence. I have heard countless heartbreaking accounts of women fleeing domestic violence, including that of Claire Austin, a local who tragically lost her life earlier this year to suspected domestic violence.

In April, I tabled a petition from one of my constituents, Mel Arnost, signed by more than 25,000 Australians. It called for urgent national reforms to better protect women, including action on education, mental health, substance abuse and our court systems. I was proud to bring that petition to parliament, and I remain committed to standing up in this parliament and standing against violence against women. Women in my community have sent me here to keep the faith on this, to keep the pressure up on the government. There have been positive steps forward, and I respect and commend those, but we need to keep the faith in this parliament to make sure that action is sustained, that action is evidence based and that we truly make a difference to the scourge of intimate partner and domestic violence and sexual violence in our community.

I welcome the government's decision to commission a rapid review into prevention strategies, and I acknowledge the work of the expert panel who delivered 21 evidence based recommendations. I do believe the government is committed to change, but we are still waiting on some of the decisions in relation to those reviews, and we need to keep that pressure up—and also at the state level to make sure that those actions that are dependent on the states are also being actioned. There are a number of areas where I feel the government does need to move faster, and I will call them out: gambling reform and alcohol reform. The federal government has a role, as do the states, in these areas; making sure that we are supporting young people who have experienced domestic violence but also young people who have experienced sexual violence; and, finally, making sure that we're really evaluating everything we do to see what really works.

I would like to talk about one specific and really quite simple change which I believe could make a difference to thousands of women, and this is around crisis payment reform. The family violence crisis payment is a one-off, non-taxable payment for people in severe financial hardship and in extreme circumstances such as escaping a violent home. But right now the system is failing. According to the 2025 Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee report, only half the eligible people actually receive the payment, with many rejected on technical grounds. This should be a lifeline payment to those in our community who need our help most, but it is wrapped up in red tape. So I'm asking the government, urging the government, to take action on this legislation and improve it for the benefit of those people who need it the most.

There are three problems with the payment at the moment. The first is the seven-day claim period; for many people in the trauma of escaping violence, seven days goes by in a flash. This should be extended to 14 days at least. We do know that at least seven per cent of rejections were because they missed that seven-day deadline. The second issue is the definition of 'home'. The payment only applies to people who have left or who have stayed in their home. Under the current legislation, home doesn't include hostels, refuges, temporary accommodation or even tents. People are struggling right now; that sense of home and permanency is not available to some of the most vulnerable people in our community, and it should be mitigated in this legislation. Finally, there is a requirement in the legislation that applicants must prove that they are intending to establish a new home. But with the housing crisis and limited resources, that can be really hard for this particular group of vulnerable people to establish and to prove, and 14 per cent of people were rejected on the basis of this. This payment was designed to help people in a crisis, but it's not doing its job, and there is an opportunity to reform it to make a difference for thousands of people while we tackle the raft of other actions we need to tackle under the rapid review of prevention.

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