Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Imagine for a minute that you're a mum with three kids under the age of seven. Life is busy, and you're trying to raise a healthy and happy family. People only really notice you at day care or school pick up or when one of your kids is having a meltdown in the supermarket. Now imagine being that same mum doing all of that whilst also experiencing physical, mental and/or coercive abuse at home. You've stayed, hoping it would get better, but after months of coaxing you finally leave, only to find you have nowhere to go, no money to help keep you and your kids in a safe space for an extended period of time and nothing that you can afford to rent, as well as services that want to help but are simply overwhelmed or move too slowly to be of any real assistance in the immediate short term. What would you do? Would you move into your car? Would you go back to the violent situation? Would you contact social services and beg them to take your children?

What I have just described is happening every day in Australia. The truth is that women and children in this country have never been more vulnerable, and we in this place are letting them down. Last week my team received a call from a woman in North Sydney who is living this experience right now. Through tears, she shared her desperate plea for support to find affordable housing in North Sydney. She said someone told her to call her federal member to see what could be done. She said to us:

Surely I am not the only one going through this—what can be done at a higher level? I don't know what else to do, I'm afraid I will lose my children if I don't find somewhere soon.

Services in North Sydney are doing everything in their power to help her, but the surge in demand for such services means that crisis centres are overflowing. Although eligible for the Start Safely NSW government payment, the payment itself is completely inadequate in our high-rent community, at just $450 a week. Besides that, it takes 12 weeks to be processed.

The waiting list for social housing is five years, if you're deemed a priority case. The CEO for Women and Children First, a not-for-profit, community based service in my electorate, told me just today that last week alone they turned away 15 women—eight in one day. Meanwhile, at Mary's House Services, another crisis housing service in my electorate, they say the harm done through domestic abuse is increasing, and:

Our caseworkers know firsthand how hard it is to find the "next step" for women leaving the refuge when there is limited government support, and a very real lack of access to affordable housing.

As outlined in Anne Summers' highly regarded report The choice: violence or poverty, women experiencing domestic violence in Australia are forced to choose between two decisions: stay in a violent relationship or leave and live in poverty. The most recent data shows that, of the 311,000 single mothers in Australia currently accessing the single parent payment, nearly 186,000 of them, or three in five, experience violence. The government's National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and Children encourages women to leave violent relationships, but the truth is that the government payment policy and other welfare measures have seen as many as half the women who do leave living in poverty.

While domestic violence breaks up families and leaves women parenting alone, it is arguably government policy that leaves them in poverty. Prior to 2006, a single parent could be eligible for a parent payment up until their last child turned 16. The change, made under the Gillard government, to drop this age to eight has been widely regarded as a historical mistake. Currently, a single parent with two children loses over $100 a week when their youngest child turns eight, and they are then forced onto JobSeeker. Recently, the Women's Economic Equality Taskforce, established under this current government, has been arguing to re-expand the single parent payment, noting the high number of single mothers falling into poverty.

On behalf of the people of North Sydney, I add our voice to calls to restore access to the parenting payment single allowance to all single parents until their youngest child turns 16. There are far too many areas of urgent need across specialist sexual, domestic and family violence services, but we have to start somewhere. These are good mothers. They are doing everything they can to protect their children, and women and children should not continue to be punished simply for being brave enough to finally leave.