Engender Equality’s Alina Thomas says big wait for family violence victims to access support
Support services have warned victims are at “great risk” as new data shows family violence incidents in Tasmania have surged by 30 per cent in two years.
In the wake of figures showing a big increase in family violence incidents in Tasmania, it has been revealed that some victim survivors wait more than 18 months to access support.
Engender Equality says due to “dire underfunding” victims are being put at greater risk while the Greens have called for the government to call an urgent roundtable to “tackle this epidemic”.
The annual report of Tasmania Police showed the number of family violence incidents increased to 6488 in 2023-24 from 5363 the previous year. There was also an increase in the number of breaches family violence orders.
The government says its Survivors at the Centre sets out a comprehensive five-year plan with more than $140m funding “which sees government, individuals and communities working together to prevent and respond to violence”.
“Engender Equality plays an important role, and the Tasmanian Government has provided funding of $4.41m plus indexation for services between 2024 and 2026,” a spokeswoman said.
Alina Thomas, CEO of Engender Equality says the police figures did not necessarily mean “an increase in violence per se” but could be a result of victim-survivors “being more aware of intimate partner violence and feeling like they can access help”.
“The concern is that we have long wait times for accessing community-based services. Victims in the south will wait over 18 months to access support from Engender due to our dire underfunding,” she said.
“When it is 18 months, and possibly longer, people are just left with such a sense of helplessness.
“They feel like there isn’t any support for them. It exacerbates the trauma, exacerbates the harm, and it’s really just putting victim survivors back into hands of the people who are harming them in the first place.
“They are at great risk of their situations escalating and needing police intervention which is expensive for the state and extremely stressful for victims.”
Greens’ prevention of family violence spokeswoman Tabatha Badger said a 30 per increase in family violence incidents in the past two years was a “frightening trend” particularly in regional areas where “family and domestic violence is prevalent”.
“It’s time for the Minister to call an urgent roundtable of sector partners and start to plan a progressive path forward to overcome family, domestic and sexual violence in Tasmania,” she said.
“Tasmanian women and children deserve to be safe in their own homes.”
Ms Badger said family violence offender program statistics showed that last year 68 people commenced the program and only 28 completed it.
“Where is the program failing? These rates are shameful and totally unacceptable,” she said.
Ms Thomas said former Family Violence Minister Jacquie Petrusma had said many times she wanted “to meet demand” from victim survivors.
“We need put resources there so that when victim survivors call, they’re able to talk to someone within a week or two weeks, maybe even four weeks.
“We can get in earlier, we can increase safety for women, we can increase the safety for children and we can take that increase in the burden on police.”
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