Thursday, 5 March 2020

Ministers statements: family violence

Ms HENNESSY (Altona—Attorney-General, Minister for Workplace Safety) (11:36): I rise today to update the house on the progress of the government’s rollout of specialist family violence courts. Of course specialist family violence courts were a key recommendation from the Royal Commission into Family Violence. They are a critical part of keeping victim survivors safe—

Members interjecting.

The SPEAKER: Order! The Leader of the Opposition!

Ms HENNESSY: They are a key part of holding perpetrators to account. This specialised model, what it does is it combines not just the jurisdiction of the Magistrates Court, but it brings the Children’s Court to be able to deal with child protection matters, it brings the VCAT jurisdiction to deal with housing and rental matters, it brings the safety and it brings the needed support services all into a one-stop shop to make sure that not only are we focused on keeping families safe but we are very focused on making sure that we hold perpetrators to account and we start to break the circuit that builds in place generations of family violence that has gone on for way too long in this country.

Not everyone, however, matches their rhetoric with their investment in these matters. We are very disappointed with the actions of the commonwealth government in cutting funding to the Court Network of Victoria when it comes to the Family Court on this front.

We will continue to survive. We will continue to support all of our services, but what we will not do is rely on thoughts and prayers as our response alone. We will keep our focus and our commitment on investment, on policy and on making sure that we keep women and children safe in our justice system. We will make sure that our attention span and our focus on these issues are sustained and continue to ensure that we are supporting the drive for change and that we are focused on making sure that we keep women and children safe in the state of Victoria.

Mr Blackwood: On a point of order, Speaker, tomorrow it will be 365 days since I put two questions on notice to the Minister for Health. It is one thing for her to block me from Twitter because she is sick of hearing about the need for a new hospital in Warragul, but she needs to answer the questions I have put to her.

The SPEAKER: Does the member have the question numbers?

Mr Blackwood: Questions 0248 and 0249. Thank you, Speaker.

Mr R Smith: On a point of order, Speaker, I want to draw your attention to a growing practice of ministers during question time. It is an issue that I have raised before which you seemed to get under control for a short while but it seems to be rearing its head again, and that is ministers talking over you when you ask them to take their seats when points of order are being made by members of this side of the house.

Ministers will routinely talk over you, mostly in an effort to get to the end of their answers so they do not have to respond to the points of order. That has happened on numerous occasions during the course of this question time. Not only do they do it to get to the end of their answer to avoid having to face a point of order ruling that you may make, but it is also just flagrant disregard for you. I see it over and over again, ministers speaking over you, and it is particularly the Premier who does it. I think ministers and the Premier need to be pulled into line to make sure that they are responding to you at the first possible moment so that points of order can be made in a timely manner, in a relevant manner and in a way that keeps the process of question time going as it should.

The SPEAKER: I thank the member for raising that point of order. With the flow of question time I like to see it move forward and questions being answered in an appropriate way. It is a forum where there is not always strict adherence to the standing orders of this place. The member has highlighted one of those areas, but there are many others. Points of order are not always taken in the correct form; and members interject from both sides of the chamber inappropriately.

I will take the member’s suggestion up. I will go away and have a think about how we might improve the application of the standing orders to question time, and I will report back to the house in the next sitting week.