Skip to main content
Home
  • The Legislative Assembly meets on 16/04/2024 (01:00 PM)
    Assembly sit 16/04/2024
  • The Legislative Council meets on 16/04/2024 (01:00 PM)
    Council sit 16/04/2024
  • The Public Administration meets on 08/04/2024 (10:00 AM)
    Committee meet 08/04/2024

Parliamentary Questions


Question Without Notice No. 619 asked in the Legislative Assembly on 20 October 2022 by Ms L. Mettam

Parliament: 41 Session: 1

FAMILY AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE SERVICES

619. Ms L. METTAM to the Minister for Prevention of Family and Domestic Violence:

I refer to the South West Refuge, a women's refuge that has turned away 340 women and children in the last 12 months due to the significant increase in demand and cost of living.

(1) How can the McGowan government justify a continued rollover of service contracts with very little indexation, resulting in real cuts to service delivery?

(2) What will the minister do to address the 12.75 per cent gap in funding for service agreements that has occurred under her watch?

Ms S.F. McGURK replied:

(1)–(2) I thank the member for the question. It is an interesting premise, because we have made a number of adjustments to the existing contracts within the community services sector, which I will address, but on the broader question of our investment in relation to preventing domestic violence, it is light years ahead. Our focus on, investment in and commitment to dealing with the scourge of domestic violence and sexual violence—another real form of gender-based violence in our community—is light years from when the member was in government.

Since we have been in government, we have achieved investment of $150 million in new funding; significant law reform; two new refuges; two new hubs, with two more on the way; law reform; amendments to the commercial tenancy legislation; and our Respectful Relationships training in schools. That is a whole lot of engagement across a broad range of sectors. It always surprises me when I get—I do not get them very often—questions in this place from the opposition in relation to our focus on domestic violence, because I think that anyone who has been watching our progress on this issue would say that there has been, as I said, significant investment and dedication to the issue.

I was particularly pleased to be with a number of service providers and sector leaders in Melbourne earlier this week to be part of the launch of the 10-year plan to combat gender-based violence in our society. There has been significant investment and focus. But on the member's particular question about whether there has been some sort of reduction in service-based funding for any of the refuges, I absolutely dispute that allegation or assertion. It is ridiculous. In fact, we have done a number of things. After advocacy from the Western Australian Council of Social Service and other sector leaders, we amended the indexation formula from what had occurred previously under the Barnett government. That means that, at the time, after a request from the sector, we gave more emphasis to the consumer price index, as had been requested. Of course, that now presents a challenge for the sector, because in fact there were two components to the indexation—one is the CPI and one is the labour price index—and although when we came into office we were initially asked by the sector to give more emphasis to the CPI, now they want us to have more emphasis on the labour price index, because wages are going up. I understand that circumstances change, and we have tried to be responsive to that, but there is no doubt we have improved the indexation formula as it relates to the sector. We gave significant boosts during COVID. That included additional people on the ground to individual services as well as to joint response teams and the like. Finally, we have given extra money to those services that required additional funding for their equal remuneration order. There were a number of services that felt that their existing contracts did not adequately cater for the equal remuneration order. I think that last year was the final year for that adjustment.

There has been a significant increase in and focus on the effort towards combating and responding to domestic violence. Extra attention has been given to the indexation formula, including the equal remuneration order and accommodation, and extra money was given during the COVID pandemic. There is a lot to do. The Liberal government left us a lot to do when we came into office. Very, very little had been done for the eight and a half years when the member's side was in government and we have been working very hard to address that. It is true that there is a lot to do, but we are working hard with the services. Commissioning work is being done with those individual family and domestic violence services and they are all part of those negotiations, including the Centre for Women's Safety and Wellbeing, the peak body, and individual services are part of those discussions as well.