Tuesday, 13 August 2024

Community Abundance

Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (18:58): (1047) My adjournment is to the Minister for Prevention of Family Violence, and the action I seek is to have the government provide the necessary funding for the Community Abundance program immediately. This program, among other projects, runs the men’s behaviour change – MBC – program in Dandenong. Community Abundance provides services for NDIS support, family and individual counselling and the men’s behaviour change program. I understand that the Labor government provided $200,000 for three years, which runs out at the end of this month, for one of the programs that Community Abundance runs, and that is the healing African communities through respectful communications project. But no money has ever been provided for the MBC program, which sees 12 to 15 men attend once a week for 2 hours and is conducted solely by volunteers – that is right, volunteers.

The MBC program has been in operation since 2014 and is now at risk of being cancelled because the volunteers are exhausted and just cannot keep up with the demands. Clearly this government does not care to reward or support selfless community volunteers. This is outrageous, since the courts are mandating that these people attend this program and there are no funds to resource it. This is typical of this chaotic, tired and irresponsible government. Currently there are eight men who have perpetrated violence and have been on the waitlist for the past three months. According to Deng Kor, a family violence practitioner who runs the programs, some of the issues are cultural, because some of these men come from refugee backgrounds, and because of life experience violence has become part of their lives. Part of the role of this program is to help men see that any form of control over a partner is also a form of abuse.

I have to say that we have to look at some of the statistics as well in terms of places like Casey, and I get statistics from police data. In the City of Casey alone 12 family incidents are dealt with every day by Victoria Police, which equates to 4369 incidents per year. Family violence is on the rise in Casey, and those aged 25 to 44 are at the highest risk of both being victim and perpetrator. The City of Casey ranked highest for family violence incidents in Victoria in the year ending March 2023, and it had 5417 reported cases. It is constantly on the increase, with a 16.5 per cent increase in reported family incidents since 2019. I have to ask the minister: if we are looking at data, let us also consider nearby shires like Cardinia, with a 24.9 per cent surge, and the City of Greater Dandenong, where my office is, which had an 11.3 per cent rise.

Minister, it is simply not good enough. Are you able to please continue funding for Community Abundance, which will add additional funding for the much-needed men’s behaviour change program?