Marion Scrymgour (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Social Services. Minister, how is the Albanese Labor government helping to end the violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children?

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

I want to thank the member for Lingiari, who for many decades has been standing up for the safety of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children and communities right across Australia. I also want to thank the many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities who shared their advice, their stories and their insights in the drafting of this report, Our waysstrong waysour voices. I want to thank the members of the steering committee for their work. It's your courage and it's your commitment that drives this plan.

Today is an historic day. For many decades, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women have been telling us they want safety for themselves and for their children. Today we have delivered on our election commitment to release a dedicated national plan for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, to end violence against women and children. The statistics are grim. An Aboriginal woman is seven times more likely to die in a domestic homicide than a non-Indigenous woman, 27 times more likely to be hospitalised due to intimate partner violence, and 41 times more likely if they live in a remote or regional community. That simply cannot continue.

Importantly, this plan has been endorsed by every state and territory, and it comes with significant extra funding: an additional $218 million so that we can change the story on the ground. We can send out mobile teams to help women leave unsafe situations. We can work with children who've been exposed to domestic violence, to stop their trauma. We can work with men who are at risk of using violence, to stop them using violence. This new investment comes on top of $262 million, which was committed in 2023, which is already making a difference—for example, in establishing men's centres that are working with men to prevent them using violence; or the $367 million which has more than doubled funding for family violence prevention legal services; the Leaving Violence Program, which so far has helped 10½ thousand people leave domestic violence; or our investment in housing—more than $5 billion in emergency and transitional housing and for remote housing in the Northern Territory.

I'm proud of the fact that the Albanese government is changing the story on family, domestic and sexual violence in this country. I know that all members would support this work, because it's only by this investment led by and delivered by First Nations communities that we'll see real change.