2016-06-20
The Greens today announced their $46 million plan over 6 years to prevent violence against women, which supports women's financial independence, secures Our Watch funding, assists sports clubs to make cultural change and supports the national roll out of Respectful Relationships programs in schools.
Greens Leader Senator Richard Di Natale said the prevention plan builds on the Greens' commitments of $5 billion over ten years for frontline domestic violence services and $60 million to put safety first in Family Law.
"Violence against women is preventable, and gender equality is the core of the solution, along with funding our vital front line services and reforming our family law system.
"An Australia free from violence against women and their children, is an Australia where women are safe, respected, valued and treated as equals in private and public life," Senator Di Natale said
Greens Deputy Leader and spokesperson for women Senator Larissa Waters said:
"Still today in Australia, women are paid 17.3 per cent less than men, they do the bulk of unpaid caring and domestic work and their superannuation payouts are on average just over half that of men.
"We need a national gender equality program to boost women's financial independence that provides 24 hours of affordable childcare per week and puts single mums struggling on Newstart onto the higher Parenting Payment Single.
"Our gender equality program would also take action to close the gender pay gap by increasing pay transparency and would assess all government policy with a gender lens.
"We strongly support Our Watch's Change the Story framework for preventing domestic violence by challenging attitudes and social norms of gender inequality.
"We Greens would extend base funding for Our Watch for at least another five years and would expand its project funding with $2 million a year for projects such as The Line social marketing campaign.
"We would develop an expert workforce of primary prevention specialists to work with organisations such as sporting clubs to help them drive cultural change.
"Our plan would support the national roll out of best practice, age-appropriate sexual education and Respectful Relationships programs in schools, with $10 million extra federal investment in quality assurance and evaluation.
"Our broad prevention program supports schools, sporting clubs, media outlets, businesses, and civil society to stop violence before it occurs by fostering the cultural change we need to eliminate gender inequality," Senator Waters said.
The Greens' plan to prevent domestic violence: http://greens.org.au/prevent-violence