MINISTERIAL STATEMENTS
Mrs McINTOSH (Lindsay) (12:19): We tell women experiencing domestic and family violence to leave: leave the house, leave the relationship, take the children, get somewhere safe. But today, in this parliament, I want us to confront the question that comes next. Where does she go?
Where does she go tonight, not in six months when her housing application might finally be approved, not next week when a refuge bed might become available? Where does she take her children when the safest thing she can do is walk out her own front door? But there is nowhere waiting on the other side.
For some women, there is family; for some, a friend; and for some, a refuge. But, for too many, there is a motel room for one night, a couch, a car or nowhere at all. Somewhere in Australia tonight, a woman is facing an impossible choice: 'Do I stay with a person hurting me, or do I take my children and risk homelessness?' That is not freedom, that is not safety, and that is not a choice any Australian woman should ever have to make.
For years, we have asked women experiencing violence to find the courage to leave. Today, I want to ask something of us. Have we built a country with the courage to be there when they do?
We know women are being hurt, we know children are growing up surrounded by fear, and we know Australian women are still dying. Sometimes, one name tells us what a thousand statistics cannot. I acknowledge the member for Parkes because this happened in his electorate.
That name is Molly Ticehurst. Molly was 28 years old, a daughter, a friend, a mother. In April 2024, Molly was murdered in her home in Forbes by her former partner.
At the time, he was on bail for domestic violence offences against her, and, recently, the Supreme Court in Orange heard that Molly's little boy takes an urn containing his mother's ashes wherever he can. A little boy carrying his mum. There are moments when politics should become very quiet, and I feel this is one of them.
Molly should have been watching her little boy grow up, taking him to school, celebrating birthdays and doing all the ordinary things that make life. Instead, her little boy carries what remains of his mum in an urn. Beneath every strategy, every funding package and every law we pass, there is ultimately one question: did we keep her safe?
Did we keep Molly safe? Will we keep the next Molly safe? That must be our measure.
Expenditure is an input; safety is the outcome. I represent Lindsay, and, when I speak about domestic violence and family violence, this is not a statistic I read in a briefing note. This is my community.
It is a woman I may pass in the high street of Penrith. It's a mother at school pick-up, a woman standing beside me at the supermarket, a woman who's cheering for her child at weekend sport and goes home to a life no-one around her can see and a woman hiding out in my electorate office because she is scared. In the 12 months to March this year, 1,285 domestic violence related assaults were recorded in the Penrith local government area.
That is the equivalent of one being recorded, on average, roughly every seven hours—morning, afternoon, night and morning again. Violence does not always leave a bruise. Sometimes, it is a bank account she cannot access, a phone being checked, a location tracked, a friendship she's no longer allowed to have or a look across the room that tells her exactly what will happen when they get home.
Sometimes, violence is an entire life organised around fear. When she finally decides to leave, she does not make one decision, she makes a hundred: Where will we sleep? Can I take the children?
How will I pay the rent? Will he find us? Will police even believe me?
Perhaps, the most frightening question of all is: what will he do when he realises I am gone? For too long, we have asked, 'Why didn't she leave?' But perhaps a harder question is: why, when she finally tried to leave, was freedom made so difficult to reach? Courage was never her problem; it can't pay a rental bond.
Courage cannot create an empty refuge bed; it cannot feed the children. Courage alone cannot rebuild a life. The immediate cost of escaping a violent relationship is now estimated at more than $7,000.
Around 117,000 Australians who have experienced family and domestic violence needed specialist homelessness services in just one year. They represent 40 per cent of everyone those services assisted. Those numbers tell us something very important.
Leaving violence and finding somewhere safe to live are not two different problems. For too many women, they are the same problem. We have spent years telling women to be brave.
Our systems need to be brave enough for them. I believe that every domestic and family violence policy in this country should face three simple tests. The first is: Can she leave?
Does she have the money? Does somebody answer the phone? Can she get immediate practical help?
If the cost of leaving is greater than the resources available to leave, we have built a trap and called it a choice. Second, is there somewhere safe for her to go—not eventually, not after 20 phone calls, but when she needs it tonight, and for long enough to rebuild? Safety cannot mean simply surviving tonight.
That woman and her family need a future tomorrow. Third, will the person causing the violence be stopped? Too often, the woman experiencing violence is the person required to change absolutely everything.
She changes her phone. She changes the locks. She changes the children's school.
She moves house. Her world becomes smaller, and somebody else, who did this to her, has all the choices, when they made the wrong choice. A woman should not have to disappear in order to survive.
The responsibility must sit where it belongs—with the person choosing violence. Our policing must respect that. It must reflect that, and our bail systems and our courts must also do that.
Freedom should belong to the victim, and the restrictions should follow the danger, not the other way around. Molly's father told the court: I still ask myself why it took Molly's life for this to happen. That question should trouble every government in this country.
Leadership demands more than responding after tragedy. Leadership means seeing the danger before the funeral and protecting the woman whose name the country does not yet know and should never have to know because she became another victim. Government cannot do this alone.
Domestic violence begins long before the police are called. It begins in attitudes about power and control. So we must teach our sons that strength is not control, that love is not possession and that respect is not weakness, and our daughters must know that love should never require them to become smaller.
I believe in an Australia where home is safety. I think that's an Australia that we all believe in—where a mother can close her front door at night and know that she's safe behind that door; where the child who's in that home doesn't lie awake listening for footsteps; where no little boy has to understand what an urn is because somebody murdered his mum; where the burden falls on the person creating the danger, not the person running from it; and where a woman who finally does find the courage to leave does not open the front door and find another cliff waiting on the other side.
I don't think that's impossible in this country. I think it's an Australia that we should all expect of ourselves. I'll come back to where I started.
We tell her to leave. We tell her she deserves better. We tell her to take her children.
We tell her to get somewhere safe. But words spoken from the safety of this chamber and parliament mean very little if there's nowhere safe for her to go. I want you to imagine the moment.
The bag is packed. The children are beside her. Her heart is racing.
Her hand is on the door. She shouldn't have to know every answer. She should not have to have money and be wealthy.
She should not have to be fearless. She should only have to know that, when she finds the courage to walk out, her country will not fail her. When she walks through that door, Australia must be on the other side—somewhere safe, somewhere with practical help, enough financial support to begin again, laws that understand the danger, people that actually believe her and a path from violence to freedom.
The true measure of our response will not be found in the announcements. It will be found in the lives that are saved—in the woman who got out, the mother who found a home and the little girl who learned that love does not hurt—and in children who get to grow up with their mums. Molly's little boy deserved that, and every child does.
We've spent years asking women whether they have the courage to leave. It's time we ask whether Australia has the courage to be there when they do. I want the answer to that first question—where does she go?—to be something every Australian woman can know with certainty: she goes somewhere safe.
She shouldn't have had to go anywhere at all. When she does leave and goes forward, we need to ensure she does not do that alone. Her country needs to go with her.