Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Families and Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Senator Askew, for the question. I was really pleased last week to be able to make an announcement in conjunction with the Assistant Minister for Community Housing, Homelessness and Community Services, Luke Howarth, in relation to the $60 million Safe Places initiative. An absolute priority of this government is to make sure that we keep all Australians safe and secure, and it is particularly important that when women make the very brave decision to escape domestic violence they have a safe place to go.

Last week we announced the awarding of 40 projects across the country, which will create 700 new beds for women and children who are escaping domestic violence. Over a 12-month period these new play-safe places will support 6,000 women and children who've had to leave their homes as a result of domestic violence. This will account for both new and refurbished accommodation which will provide them with a safe place to live and to sleep but also, most importantly, enable them to access the domestic and family violence services these women need so that we can wrap around them in a coordinated way so that, hopefully, we can help them through what must be an extraordinarily difficult time. In selecting the projects we worked with the state and territory governments around Australia, and I thank them all for the extraordinary amount of work and support that they have afforded us as we've gone through this very detailed process. We made self-contained accommodation an absolute priority, because that's the feedback that we got from the sector about what children and women want when they have to start rebuilding their lives.

It was great to be able to announce the project in my home state of South Australia alongside Anglicare and Nunga Mi:Minar, the Indigenous family and domestic violence provider in South Australia. I very much look forward to seeing all of these projects completed over the next 18 months to support women escaping domestic violence.