Wednesday, 15 May 2024

 Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (18:38): (893) My adjournment today is to the Attorney-General. All eyes are on the issue of family violence in the wake of a series of tragedies that have left Victorians reeling. The appalling rates of murder, violence and other types of assault that too many women and their children experience have sharply increased in just the last five years. The number of reported incidents of family violence in Victoria was 75,056 in 2017, and by 2022 that had increased by 23 per cent to 92,296 reported incidents. Yet despite rising reports of family violence, funding for the community legal sector has stagnated. In a similar time period, demand for Aboriginal legal services has doubled since 2018.

We all know that multisector approaches are essential in reducing the shockingly high rates of violence against women and children. While injections of increased income are welcome, we know that the solutions lie across the agencies that the government are responsible for. More stable and secure housing is needed, more social workers are needed, and it is timely to remind members that more community legal services are needed. Community legal services play a critical role in supporting women and children who are experiencing or at risk of family violence. This includes support with setting up safe parenting arrangements for children, child protection, social security matters, tenancy issues, migration, financial abuse services and sexual harassment services. But this part of the family violence support system is rarely recognised, despite the essential role that community legal services play – firstly, in keeping children and women safe and then in assisting them to begin to recover, by helping them navigate the legal system. Yet a lack of funding for the family violence services that the community legal centres provide means that centres are forced to turn away thousands of victim-survivors of family violence in need of their assistance. As one of the CEOs said last week:

Community Legal Centres across Victoria and the country are inundated by the sheer number of victim survivors needing support, but the funding just doesn’t match up to demand.

Community and Aboriginal legal services who provide critical services to victim-survivors need more funding. Without it, the upward trend of women being killed by men will continue – it will worsen. My adjournment today is to ask the Attorney-General to commit to a long-term, sustainable funding model for community and Aboriginal legal services that is commensurate with the community’s need and the community’s demand.