MINISTERIAL STATEMENTS

Ms WATSON-BROWN (Ryan) (11:33): I rise to speak to the Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner's 2026 report to parliament. This report details the shocking realities of domestic, family and sexual violence that is ongoing in Australia. At least 35 women have been killed by violence so far this year, according to Counting Dead Women.

Recently in Queensland, four women were killed in domestic violence related incidents in a 45-day period. At least 39,758 women were sexually assaulted in Australia last year. Women living with disability are still three times more likely to experience domestic, family and sexual violence.

First Nations women are still 27 times more likely to be hospitalised as a result of assault. We owe it to all those women and children to act urgently. We owe it to all the victim-survivors and experts who contributed to numerous inquiries, reliving their trauma in the hope that their experience would shape reforms and would actually get action.

Responsibility means properly funding the long, slow, hard work of changing attitudes and behaviour and the workforce needed to do that work. Housing and economic security are women's safety issues. If women and children can't afford to leave and have nowhere to go, they cannot escape violence.

Every year, nearly 12,000 women and children are turned away from short-term accommodation. For those who can get into crisis accommodation, 60 per cent have not been able to find stable housing by the time they leave. That often means returning to a violent perpetrator.

It would cost around $4.6 billion to build public housing for the 12,000 women and children currently missing out. Giving them a place to go means giving them an opportunity to escape violence and to rebuild their lives. If Labor are serious in their commitment to end violence, they really need to get serious about funding housing.

We also know that too many women and children are left in poverty because of financial abuse from current or former partners. I welcome reforms to prevent the weaponisation of the child support system and moves today to allow limited debts to be excused. This is a good first step.

It's just a first step though; much more is needed—waivers for all debts accrued through financial abuse, penalties for financial advisers complicit in that abuse and funding for specialist financial abuse support services. To meet these challenges, investment in prevention and early intervention programs is absolutely essential. But prevention funding must not come at the expense of funding crisis responses.

Every week, 225 women and children are turned away from crisis accommodation. Women's legal services are turning away 52,000 people a year, because they just can't keep up with demand. Funding for 1800RESPECT, while welcome, just creates more referrals to specialist sexual violence services, which are already too full.

Women are being forced to wait months for expert sexual violence support, at a time when women need support the most. Every barrier and delay is traumatic and makes women less safe. We don't even know the exact scale of the unmet need, because the work to gather that data is just still not done.

But we know the crisis response sector is absolutely at breaking point, and the government must step up. Of course, we should be working towards a future free from violence, but, in the meantime, we just cannot let women and children experiencing violence right now fall through these wide cracks. It takes long-term, secure funding, and unless the government provides secure funding and holds state governments to account, things are just not going to get better.