Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Recently I visited the West Street Centre in Wollongong, a community based counselling service dedicated to women and young people who have experienced and have lived with the trauma of child sexual assault. Child sexual assault is still a largely hidden crime in our community. This is despite the fact that many research findings suggest that it is a common crime, with up to one in three girls and one in seven boys having experienced sexual assault by the age of 18. The impacts of this hidden issue are great. The experience of isolation is one of the most direct effects for the victim or survivor of this abuse. Isolation as well as a range of other traumatic effects of this abuse have been strongly linked to serious mental illness in adulthood.

The West Street Centre assists women in their recovery from the effects of childhood sexual abuse as well as associated mental illness. It helps women to meet together in groups and forums, to understand that they are not alone and to develop the sense of community that has often been taken from them as children. It is obvious that centres like the one I visited are understaffed and underresourced, with little by way of federal government support.

This country needs a national long-term plan to address violence against women and children. The most recent survey conducted by the ABS in 2005 estimates conservatively that one in five women experienced domestic violence or sexual assault in the previous year, but over their lifetime as many as 57 per cent of women reported experiencing at least one incident of physical or sexual violence.

Instead of the piecemeal approach that we have seen on the part of the Howard government in which programs are funded and then abandoned, in which advertising campaigns are started and then scrapped and in which community groups are struggling with inadequate resources, a Labor government has committed itself to develop a national plan to prevent violence against women and children. This plan includes a commitment to firstly establish a national council on violence against women and children. Council members will include survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, law enforcement agencies, academics and peak service bodies, including the Women’s Services Network and the National Association of Services Against Sexual Violence. We would want to ensure that the council presents the latest data on programs and progress to a cabinet formed when Labor is elected to government.

We see ourselves establishing goals, time lines and responsibilities to ensure that all levels of government and agencies are making progress in dealing with these unacceptable situations. We want to ensure that schools teach values and respect and are able to provide information to younger students on issues to do with violence and sexual assault in the community. We need to work with state governments and the community sector to particularly improve access to crisis accommodation, because, as we all know, in our regions the shelters that are there to assist women escaping from domestic violence are often overcrowded and insufficient accommodation is available. We need to improve the transition from these crisis centres to long-term, secure, affordable accommodation. We need to promote successful local programs and help turn them into effective national programs, and we need to prevent violence in our community by implementing a public health response.

I hope that all involved with the West Street Centre in Wollongong will take some comfort in knowing that politicians are listening and that there is a genuine commitment by my party to deal with many of the issues raised with me on my recent visit to the centre.