Budget 2022: $1.7bn to help combat domestic violence

‘Power, resources and opportunity.’ Why Jim Chalmers wants a gender-balanced budget.

The budget provides record spending of $1.7bn over six years to end violence against women and children.

Cash and housing for women and children fleeing domestic violence are part of Labor’s “gender responsive budget” to improve women’s physical safety and financial security.

The Albanese government’s first Women’s Budget Statement warns it may be “distressing for some readers”, given its references to domestic violence, sexual assault, suicide and self-harm.

“Violence against women and children has reached epidemic proportions in Australia,” it states.

The budget provides record spending of $1.7bn over six years to end violence against women and children.

Labor has continued the Coalition’s practical Escaping Violence Payment of up to $5000 – $1500 in cash and $3500 worth of clothing, furniture or other supports – to help battered women flee violent homes, at a cost of $240m.

The government also will amend the Fair Work Act to provide all workers access to 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave.

Five hundred frontline social workers will be hired to help DV victims, at a cost of $169m.

Another $40.4m will be spent on grants to specialised family violence services, plus $58m to provide women with “safe phones”, security and surveillance through the Keeping Women Safe in their Homes program.

Lifeline Australia will receive $40m to deliver DV-alert, a training program to help doctors, nurses and frontline community workers identify DV and help victims.

A men’s referral service, offering confidential telephone counselling and referrals for perpetrators of DV to “help change their behaviour’’, will cost $10.8m.

Electronic monitoring of DV perpetrators will be funded through $25m in federal grants to state and territory governments.

Teenage boys deemed to be at risk of offending – including those who are themselves victims of domestic violence – will be helped in a $35m “early intervention trial” to break the cycle of intergenerational violence.

“(The trial is for) young men and boys aged 12 to 18 years who present with adverse childhood experiences including family or domestic violence, and who are at risk of perpetrating family, domestic or sexual violence,” the document states.

Recognising higher rates of domestic violence in remote communities, $10.7m will be provided to the Northern Territory to tackle family violence.

Another Coalition initiative, providing temporary visa holders with financial, legal and migration support, will be continued by Labor at a cost of $12.6m.

Four thousand of the 30,000 new social and affordable housing properties to be built in the next five years will be reserved for victim-survivors of domestic and family violence, as well as older women on low incomes who are at greatest risk of homelessness.

The Women’s Budget Statement shows that a woman working full time earns on average 14 per cent less than a man – equivalent to $264 a week.

Women’s earnings fall by an average of 55 per cent in the first five years of parenthood – a driver for the government’s decision to share paid parental leave between mothers and fathers.

The government will force companies with more than 100 staff to publish how much they pay men, compared with women, to increase transparency in pay negotiations.

“Women in Australia continue to shoulder the majority of unpaid work and caring responsibilities and are more likely to be in part-time, casual or low-paid work as they try to balance work and family,’’ the document states.