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.