Thursday, 7 March 2024

 Samantha RATNAM (Northern Metropolitan) (17:50): (773) My adjournment matter tonight is for the Minister for Women. My ask is that she ensures specialist women’s services are properly funded in the next state budget. In particular I ask the minister to retain the 2023–24 uplift funding for specialist family violence and women’s health services and to boost funding for primary prevention and multicultural services. The uplift funding will lapse in June 2024, and I have heard from many services that the sector desperately needs this funding to stay afloat. I have heard from the family violence service sector too that their waiting lists are months long, posing a safety risk for women and children. Without adequate funding it will be difficult for them to meet the demand and retain workers. Services are seeing high levels of burnout and staff turnover. This has been exacerbated by broader service system failures, particularly the lack of available housing. Services are saying they have not seen this level of need from clients before. Demand for services is far outstripping supply. Family violence services need to retain the uplift funding so their situation does not become even more dire.

I have also spoken with specialist women’s health organisations, which do invaluable work to provide place-based specialist primary prevention services. They are similarly reliant on the uplift funding for the provision of core services. The government must fund these services if it is serious about addressing the health inequalities women face. The Premier has announced an inquiry into women’s pain, but what is the point of having this inquiry if the various services that would respond to its findings are underfunded and unable to do the work? Providing proper funding for these services is not only the right thing to do but the economical thing to do. Every dollar spent on primary prevention means fewer dollars spent downstream on more acute and chronic conditions. The government has been vocal about how constrained the budget is going to be, but responsible economic management means investing now to save money in the future.

I also want to note the importance of adequately funding multicultural women’s services. The Orange Door service has been an incredible presence in the family violence sector. We are hearing that women from refugee and migrant backgrounds are being referred to specialist multicultural organisations for case management; however, these services do not have adequate funding or staff. Volunteer-run services are being inundated with casework requests far beyond their capacity. Volunteers are nonetheless persevering in providing services because they care about the women in their community and they can see there is nowhere else for migrant women to go.

Similar trends are present in the women’s health sector. The mainstreaming of multicultural women’s services has not been working. The research plainly tells us that specialist multicultural women’s services are essential to providing culturally safe services. We need them to support the growing diverse Victorian population. Specialist women’s services are fundamental to the pursuit of safety and gender equality, and this includes specialist refuges for women from culturally diverse backgrounds escaping family violence. Minister, I ask you to sustainably fund women’s health and family violence services in the next budget.