2024-04-24
The murder of 28-year-old Molly Ticehurst in Forbes has rightly shocked our whole community. Current government actions to address gendered violence have proven to be inadequate in keeping women safe.
The Greens NSW share the sadness and frustration of the gendered violence sector at this latest preventable murder and call again for an urgent and significant increase in government funding for domestic violence and women’s safety services.
The NSW domestic and family violence sector does an astonishing amount of work to keep women and children safe while operating in an extremely underfunded and under supported environment. The Greens NSW are calling on the NSW Labor government to urgently provide a significant and lasting uplift in funding towards programs that are proven to keep women safe and are supported by the domestic and family violence sector. We are also calling on the NSW Department of Communities and Justice to commit to review the entire life-cycle of gendered violence cases to stop victim-survivors being let down by our police and justice systems.
Quotes attributable to Abigail Boyd, Greens NSW Spokesperson for Gendered Violence and Abuse:
“The NSW domestic and family violence sector is dangerously underfunded, with the NSW Government providing less than half of the funding that the Victorian Government provides. Almost half of all of the women murdered in Australia so far this year lived in NSW and we are failing to take the action needed to prevent further deaths in our state.
“Chris Minns and Michael Daley have now announced they will be reviewing the bail laws and conditions that may apply in cases of serious domestic violence allegations. Respectfully, a simplistic knee-jerk law and order response is a distraction from the complex and comprehensive whole-of-society work that needs to be done to address the gendered violence epidemic and keep women in our State safe.
“Chris Minns and the Labor government aren’t taking this issue seriously - they are instead continuing the legacy of the previous Coalition government by grasping for administrative and legislative tweaks and calling it action, all the while avoiding doing what the domestic and family violence sector have for decades been telling them needs to be done, and to fund actual evidence-based solutions.
“We support the calls by DVNSW for an immediate investment of at least $40 million to implement the NSW Primary Prevention Strategy.
“We need a review of ADVOs to ensure they are taken seriously and enforced properly. We need courts and our legal systems to really, meaningfully prioritise the safety of victim-survivors. We need responsive and proactive wrap-around supports for victim-survivors to protect their safety from perpetrators re-offending. We need funding for domestic and family violence shelters. We need to massively resource initiatives like ‘Staying Home, Leaving Violence’.
“The NSW Treasurer, Daniel Mookhey, has recently made a big show of talking up budget pressures, framing funding priorities as ‘Must Haves’ and ‘Nice to Haves’. By any discernible metric, finally addressing the epidemic of gendered violence is a ‘Must Have’. The upcoming NSW Budget will be a clear demonstration of whether the NSW Labor government is committed to real action on this issue, or if they will continue the tradition of previous NSW Governments in considering the prevention of domestic and family violence as an optional extra.”