Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Every week in Australia, women and children suffer at the hands of male partners and former partners. Already this year, at least 23 women have been murdered due to family and domestic violence. It was devastating this week to read that there's been a surge in domestic and family violence in my home state of Queensland. Women's Legal Service Queensland answered more than 15,700 calls for help in the 2024-25 financial year, and that's a 10 per cent increase on the previous year. We've also heard that Women's Legal Service, nationally, are turning away 52,000 people each year because they don't have the funding they need to keep up with demand.

The Albanese government's funding continues to fall short of the $1 billion per year that the women's safety sector says they need to ensure that everyone who seeks help can get it. Current Commonwealth funding is just above three-quarters of what the sector says is needed to meet demand, and that figure's already out of date, and we know demand has increased. This condemns one-in-four to one-in-five women to being turned away to go back to violence. We are a wealthy country; that is not acceptable.

It will take systemic action to stop violence against women—tackling the root causes and transforming harmful social norms—but it will also require adequate funding of the organisations that do the hard work on the front lines of this epidemic. Around 95 per cent of all victims of violence, including sexual violence—irrespective of their gender—experience violence from a male perpetrator, so engaging all men and boys is imperative to transforming our culture of gendered violence. Prevention must be prioritised to stop women being killed by men's violence and to dismantle our persistent rape culture.

I'm proud that the Greens have got a comprehensive policy package to address this national crisis, but we need the government to come to the table with the funding required to tackle this national crisis.