2025-07-30
The ACT Labor Government has scrapped a vital grants program that supports community organisations to develop innovative prevention, early intervention, response and healing to keep women and gender diverse people safe.
“I am deeply concerned that the ACT Government has scrapped the Women’s Safety Grants, evidently with zero consultation with the sector,” said ACT Greens spokesperson for Women’s Affairs, Laura Nuttall.
Responding to questioning by Greens leader Shane Rattenbury, Minister for Women, Dr Marisa Paterson admitted that some of the proposed funding the Government has allocated to frontline domestic and family violence services was not in fact new money, but simply money taken away from the Women’s Safety Grants.
“In a national epidemic of men’s violence against women, we need genuinely new funding for both frontline services and community-based programs that focus on other forms of response, prevention, early intervention, recovery and healing. We can’t have a budget that takes from one to fund the other.
“The Government can’t claim to be taking women’s safety seriously when cutting an effective grant program that community organisations have used to help women and gender diverse people. It’s especially frustrating to lose programs like this when these grants are aligned with national priorities—specifically the pillars of our National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children.
“These women’s safety grants have been critical in helping organisations to trial innovative, community-based support for women and gender diverse people. These supports are often designed for and by women with disabilities, who are LGBTQIA+, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander or from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
“It is particularly alarming that the government admitted that this decision was taken with no consultation with those who help to provide women’s services, including with those in the community sector who have used these grants to get programs off the ground.
“One of the justifications the Minister made for cutting funding was that there wasn’t enough money in the grant program. This just doesn’t make sense. With a price tag of just $100 000, in reality the government should be increasing the overall amount of money in the grants program rather than cutting it entirely.
“This came on the same day as the Minister acknowledged that there was currently no active Women’s Ministerial Advisory Council, despite having had months to prepare for the end of the last such council. The government has serious questions to answer about what they’re doing to listen to a diversity of women’s voices and other relevant stakeholders in family and domestic violence,” said Ms Nuttall.
Quotes attributable to Sue Webeck, CEO of Domestic Violence Crisis Service
" This grants program has enabled services to trial and test innovative approaches, often of smaller-scale responses to increase women's safety in the ACT. Small grants programs like this are often the most accessible way for organisations and community groups with little to no administrative support to seek resources to deliver targeted and innovative programs within their communities, programs and activities we otherwise would not see delivered in our community.