Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations (Senator Watt) to a question without notice I asked today relating to funding for legal assistance services.

Earlier today Minister Watt responded to my questions about the insufficient funding to legal assistance services by gaslighting me and saying that my numbers were wrong. They weren't. And then he went on to pat his government on the back for their unprecedented funding of the sector. Go check over your own numbers, Minister Watt, because, no matter how many ways you try to spin it, everyone knows that the funding is nowhere near what the sector called for or what your own independent review called for. No amount of gaslighting or smoke and mirrors will change this. You have chosen to underfund this sector. That is a fact. And now you're trying to gaslight everyone.

This sort of behaviour is why no-one trusts the Labor government. This government is only focused on trying to create a good headline, not on what matters to communities. Legal services have called the funding a 'betrayal' and an 'insult'. When I tried to question the impact the grossly insufficient funding will have on deaths in custody, I didn't even get a response on this. Shame on you. Shame on you all, Labor. You wave the flag, you have your Indigenous minister and you pretend to be our friends while you stab us in the back, not even to get a response.

It is not too late for your gammon government to do something about this right now. Tell your Prime Minister to do his job so that women fleeing domestic violence can go to a legal service and get help, because that's what you're stopping. You're stopping services to women in need. And, because they don't get these services, what happens? Their children get taken from them. Only under a Labor government have child removals been so bad—ever! So you have to do your job. Fund these legal services. Fund the Aboriginal legal services. You call them in when you want them, when you need to tick your little black box, but you won't put your money where your mouth is. You talk about women's safety when you don't even fund the very services that provide that safe option for them. Shame!

Question agreed to.