MOTIONS

Dr SCAMPS (Mackellar) (09:23): I first of all would like to thank my colleague the member for Warringah for bringing forward this incredibly important suspension motion. I'd also like to acknowledge and thank the minister and the government for all the efforts that they've done to date to address this really important issue. We know that you are genuinely addressing this issue, and we do thank you for that.

But we also heard that the rates of sexual assault are exploding, particularly for under 18-year-olds, and it is extremely alarming. I think the finish line is moving ahead of us the whole time. Everything we do is not enough.

We are not getting there. We need to change our tactics. We need to be looking a whole lot more at prevention.

I was at the Northern Beaches police awards the other week, and I spoke to the Acting Assistant Commissioner and what she told me was really alarming. 80 per cent of the work that they do is related to domestic violence. 80 per cent of their call-outs are related to domestic violence. That is absolutely stunning. It floored me completely.

That is what they are focusing on. Whatever we are doing is not enough. This is a crisis and we do need to keep looking at this.

I know we've got a lot of reports and we've got a lot of information, but whatever we're doing is not working. I also just want to call out Pauline Hanson's comments from the other week. She illustrated, quite frankly, a stunning level of ignorance.

She told women who were getting abused by men to not 'put up with it'. That ignores so much. So many times when you try and leave a relationship that is violent, that is what triggers the violence.

Hannah Clarke is the example. She was separated from her husband. She had left.

She was living somewhere separately with her three children. She had a domestic violence order, and yet she and her children were still killed. It is not simply about not putting up with it.

There's a severe lack of crisis accommodation and frontline services. On the Northern Beaches, for example, we have only 10 government funded crisis rooms available for women and children escaping domestic violence. Women & Children First is one of the shelters on the Northern Beaches.

They turn away over 10 women and their families every single week. That organisation is hugely funded by philanthropy, so we need greater investment in these crisis accommodation and support networks. Children who are victims of domestic violence are victims in their own right.

There's very little funding that goes into supporting them, and that's something that keeps coming up. The number on social housing waitlists in the Northern Beaches has risen to over 850 cases. The typical wait for a three-bedroom home exceeds 10 years.

I thank the government again for the work that they're doing on social housing. Legal Aid, tens of thousands— (Time expired) Question negatived.