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

Three days ago, while this parliament was consumed with weaponising the traumatic experiences of women, another woman was killed by violence, in Bedford, Western Australia. On the available records, she was the 17th woman killed by violence in 2023. These records are kept not by government, as they should be, as we do for the road toll, but by a volunteer organisation called Counting Dead Women. Seventeen women have been killed this year by people they know—their partners, their ex-partners and, in several cases, their sons. They were young women, older women, women in cities, women in regional areas, women who left, women who stayed. This epidemic of gendered violence demands our attention. It demands that attitudes change to prevent these murders and it demands that support services be fully funded to help everyone who reaches out for help.

Women safety services say they need $1 billion each year to meet demand from women and children and survivors who seek support and safety from violence. Yet, as the department confirmed to me in estimates, the government has allocated less than half of the funding to frontline services that they say they need to not turn people away. We need to do better.

Today, I remember the 17 women killed by men's violence so far in 2023: Monique Lezsak, Tatiana Dokhotaru, Heather Ball, Emmerick Lasakar, Lisa Fenwick, Hannah Pringle, Lynne Wright, Jacqui Purton, Margarette Smetheram, Anastasia Slastion, Janet Guthrie, Krystle Monks, Wendy Sleeman, Dayna Isaac, Lindy Lucena and two victims whose names are yet to be released. We will not forget them. This has to stop. We need full funding for those frontline support services now before more women die.