2019-02-11
Resopnding to the Morrison Government's announcement on DV and family violence today, Greens spokesperson for women, Senator Larissa Waters said:
"Six months into the job, the Prime Minister has finally mentioned domestic violence. However the paltry amount of funding announced shows he still doesn’t understand the seriousness of the issue and still hasn’t realised that the real terror threat and national security crisis is against women in their homes.
"Add another zero to the announcement and the women of Australia might start to take it seriously. But this Government is still the one who slashed frontline domestic violence services in 2014 and continues to routinely underfund and ignore women fleeing violence.
"What Australian women need to be safe is paid DV leave, a massive funding boost for frontline DV crisis services so no woman is turned away, leadership to drive cultural change, and decent funding for primary prevention of DV.
"Today’s announcement of $78m of funding comes after the Coalition’s massive cuts to frontline services and falls well short of what is actually needed.
"The Greens have renewed their commitment from last election to budget for a $5 billion DV package over 10 years, to give frontline response services, prevention programs and research the long term funding certainty they need.
"We can afford to do this, and with six women killed already this year, we can’t afford not to."