Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support this motion, and I thank the member for Lingiari for the opportunity to do so. 'Our Ways—Strong Ways—Our Voices' is Australia's first standalone national plan for ending family, domestic and sexual violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children, developed in partnership with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It provides $218 million in new funding for a national network of up to 40 Aboriginal community controlled organisations to deliver community led specialist support services.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are seven times more likely to be victims of intimate partner homicide. They're 27 times more likely to be hospitalised due to family violence—41 times in regional and very remote communities. In Victoria, the state that I represent, in the year to March 2025, family incidents involving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people increased by almost 15 per cent against an overall Victorian family violence figure that itself hit a record high. In Victoria, family violence is the single biggest driver of First Nations child removal; 88 per cent of First Nations children in home care have experienced family violence. That figure is an indictment on decades of policy failure and its intergenerational cost.

Victoria is one of only two Australian jurisdictions with an Aboriginal-specific strategy on ending family violence. Funding to ACCOs for family violence and sexual assault service delivery has increased tenfold since 2017-18 and Aboriginal access points operated by organisations like VACCA and the Wathaurong Aboriginal Co-operative have opened in multiple sites. But these organisations have consistently raised concerns about the lack of ongoing funding for community prevention projects, the competitive process by which funding is administered and the need to reapply for funding every year—with successful projects often funded only as pilots rather than as ongoing programs. You cannot build a sustained response to intergenerational trauma on annual grant rounds. Victoria's royal commission found that lack of funding and short-term funding cycles was undermining efforts for prevention and early intervention, and that insufficient investment in evaluation meant that it was impossible to evaluate target resources appropriately.

That finding is now a decade old, but the structural problem it identified has not been resolved. The Victorian Aboriginal Child and Community Agency has documented that Aboriginal women and children who are fleeing violence often don't feel culturally safe when they engage with mainstream providers. They're often forced to retell their stories across multiple services, and on occasion they have experienced discrimination when seeking emergency accommodation.

So the gap between policy aspiration and lived reality continues to affect women and children in the community at a state and federal level. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women have consistently called for action through the Senate inquiry into missing and murdered First Nations Women and Children and, more recently, through the rapid review of prevention approaches.

This plan is a long-awaited response to eight recommendations from that former inquiry and 12 from the latter, and it provides, for the first time, a genuine framework to address our obligations under the National Agreement on Closing the Gap—specifically, target 13 on family violence and target 12 on out-of-home care. The plan will fund mobile teams in remote areas after violent incidents. It will fund safer transport and emergency accommodation, planning to help victims leave violence and stay safe, and community playgroups where mothers and babies can connect with elders, receive parenting support and be linked into early health and healing. The plan also includes outreach programs for men and boys, because ending violence means changing behaviour, not only managing its consequences.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women have been steadfast for decades in their advocacy for a plan like this. During that time they have buried daughters and sisters while they have worked and called for action. They deserve a parliament that is equally as steadfast in its response. So I commend this motion to the chamber.

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