Portfolio — 25 May 2026

Minister for Social Services Tanya Plibersek used a Question Time answer on 25 May to announce a $4.4 billion investment package as the next phase of the government's action plan to end family, domestic and sexual violence [TA-260525-house-43807c883b19:s215]. The package is broad in scope: it makes the leaving-violence payment permanent, commits $1.2 billion to new crisis and transitional housing, allocates $183 million to making the child-support system safer for victim-survivors, and dedicates $218 million to a First Nations-specific violence plan [TA-260525-house-43807c883b19:s215].

Service capacity also features heavily — the 500 Workers program receives a 70 percent funding boost, 1800RESPECT a 40 percent increase, and child counselling services receive over $80 million [TA-260525-house-43807c883b19:s215]. A new workplace entitlement rounds out the package: ten days of paid family-and-domestic-violence leave [TA-260525-house-43807c883b19:s215].

Alongside the funding commitments, Plibersek opened a consultation process on the next national strategy and flagged two emerging policy concerns. She identified tech-facilitated abuse as a growing challenge, and warned that incidents where both perpetrators and victims are under 18 are rising sharply — a signal that the strategy will need to address younger cohorts more directly [TA-260525-house-43807c883b19:s215].

She also noted that legislation has already passed to prevent perpetrators from weaponising the social-security system against victims, positioning the investment package as building on completed legislative groundwork rather than standing alone [TA-260525-house-43807c883b19:s215].

The announcement touches multiple portfolio domains beyond Social Services. The $1.2 billion crisis and transitional housing component carries direct implications for housing policy; the First Nations plan intersects with Indigenous affairs; and the ten-day paid leave entitlement sits at the junction of employment and industrial relations. The record for this sitting day contains a single source document, so the Note reflects that contribution alone — no cross-stream or prior-period context is available to establish trajectory.