Thursday, 14 August 2025

Family violence

Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (10:03): This government claims to stand with victims of family violence. However, its actions say otherwise. In this year’s budget Labor has cut $8.3 million from primary prevention, $24.2 million from service delivery and $169 million from housing assistance. Victoria Police, already under-resourced, has admitted it can no longer guarantee victim notifications when violent offenders are released from prison. This failure could be fatal, and unfortunately it already has been fatal. Noeline Dalzell was murdered in front of her children by her abusive ex-partner. A simple warning from police could have saved her life. Instead, the coroner’s recommendation for mandatory victim notification has gone unheeded because they have been unable to fund it. Meanwhile 1100 police positions remain unfilled, 43 police stations have closed or reduced their hours, and VicPol is now responding to a family violence incident every 5 minutes. These are not just statistics, these are signals. Victims are being abandoned and prevention is being sacrificed to cover Labor’s blowouts of the budget. If the Premier believes in protecting women and children, she must prove it by restoring funding, respecting the experts and fixing a broken system.