Subjects: funding needed for domestic violence services, migration
JAYNIE SEAL: Sexual violence is a crisis that affects the whole of Australia. Full stop. Australia, who supports people in these situations is urgently trying to secure more funding, which is set to run out in June. Or joining me live is Shadow Home Affairs minister Karen Andrews and Full stop CEO Hayley Foster. Thank you so much both for joining us. Um, we’ll start with you. First of all, Hailey, you are meeting, uh, the Prime Minister today and the Senator Gallagher on Thursday. What are you asking for from the government?
HAYLEY FOSTER: Yeah, look, this is really us to, um, hand on heart saying, um, please help us, uh, keep this service open at the moment we’re supporting and, and, you know, providing 5,000 interventions in counselling every year to people right across the country who have no other, um, access point for counselling when they’ve been experiencing sexual assault or sexual abuse or domestic violence, um, with, for anyone 24 7. And that’s free and it’s confidential. Um, and, you know, we’re talking about people like young, young people, people who can’t afford the Medicare gap or there aren’t any services in the local areas. So we are really, um, just I guess hands on heart saying, can you please help us keep this open? We have a national crisis on our hands and we’re trying to do everything we can, um, to support people, um, but we can’t do it without some degree of support
JAYNIE SEAL: And Shadow Minister Karen Andrews, thank you for joining us. You wrote to the Minister for Social Services, Amanda Rishworth. What was the outcome?
KAREN ANDREWS: Well, I’m still waiting for a response from Minister Rishworth, but I’m sure that she will respond and I know that she does take issues in relation to family and domestic violence very seriously. The point of me writing to the Minister was to make sure that front of mine was the need to make sure that there was appropriate levels of, of funding. In the case of, uh, telephone counselling, telephone, uh, advice, it is so important that people have the opportunity to call someone who is experienced, who’s knowledgeable, who is very well qualified in the areas that, um, they are able to provide support for those affected by domestic and family violence. And as we’ve just heard from Ms. Foster, some of the people that call the helplines, the assistance online are people who would not be able to access services in their own community, or they’re unable to access them in any other forms potentially because of the costs involved in this. So the services that are provided by Full Stop are in fact very important and quite unique.
JAYNIE SEAL: And Haley, important and unique as, uh, Carrie I just just mentioned there. Talk us through what the service does. You’ve given us a, a little bit of a snapshot, but give us some more information and a bit of the history on Full Stop Australia.
HAYLEY FOSTER: Yeah, well, we actually used to run 100 Respect way back when, um, but we, uh, didn’t go for that, uh, as a subcontractor when it was privatized. Uh, but, you know, we had, uh, to the rescue, we had NRMA Insurance and a number of private and philanthropic, um, donors. We also have moms and dads, um, and everybody, um, who does Facebook donations for us for their birthdays and that sort of thing. And that’s really sustained us. And the reason we’ve had so much public support is because of the high quality of the services that we offer. So when you call Full Stop Australia, you go straight through to a trauma specialist counselor who’s fully qualified and accredited as a social worker or a psychologist, uh, and you, you get that care. And it’s not just a one-off intervention, which is way the way 1800-RESPECT and other services are set up. It’s, it’s actually enables people to have short, medium and long-term care where there are gaps. Perhaps somebody’s on a waiting list, we’re able to hold them and support them, um, when they’re, you know, in a really highly traumatized situation while they’re waiting to get into local services, we can be a twenty four seven port of call and it’s that continuous service. And importantly that means that people don’t have to retell their stories. Um, it’s very different to, you know, a regular one off hotline where you call up and start from scratch each time. This is a therapeutic service available to people where there are significant gaps. So it might be in a, a regional rule or remote area that don’t have trauma specialist counseling available. It might be a child or young person that has to rely upon the family member, the very family member that’s abusing them to access healthcare, and or somebody in a culturally, um, diverse community who, um, you know, feel that they can’t actually speak out about their domestic violence situation. So this is really anonymous, so it’s kind of feeling really critical gas. It’s actually a fairly small niche service. Um, you know, so we’re not like calling for a lot of money. It’s, it’s $500,000 a year. So I guess, you know, in the scheme of things, we’re usually on a sky talking about massive reforms, um, costing hundreds of millions of dollars. In this case, we’re just plain to the government to please, um, keep this critical service open to help build what we know to be so many massive gaps in shortfalls in services right across the country. Um, we are just trying to do our part to, to fill some of those gaps. So survivors who need us can reliably pick up the phone and, and know they’re gonna get through.
JAYNIE SEAL: And Minister Andrews, as Haley Foster just said, they’re a small amount of money for making a, a big impact. Where reading this week, domestic shelters, domestic violence shelters are, are at their capacity in Queensland. We know what we are in a, a crisis countrywide. So the importance of this funding certainly sounds very much needed.
KAREN ANDREWS: Look, it absolutely is, and I think everyone is very delighted in making sure that we do all what we possibly can to prevent domestic and family violence. But there needs to be opportunities for people who are affected by family domestic violence to be able to seek support and get support as soon as they possibly can. And that’s why the telephone counselling services are a very key part of the response. And if they can save a life, if they can help one person, then it’s incredible value for money. But in the case of Full Stop, I mean the statistics are that it’s 5,000 people who are using their services. That’s 5,000 people that have been helped and assisted by this service. And $500,000 a year seems to me to be very good value for money.
JAYNIE SEAL: Before we let you both go shadow Minister, I just wanted to ask you about our top story. Australia is set to record the biggest two year population surge in history. It looks like New South Wales and Victoria will account for two thirds of that increase. The hope that labour shortages will ease and certainly are boosting consumer spending. The big question though is where are these people going to live?
KAREN ANDREWS: And that is in fact the biggest question now we’ve just been talking about domestic and family violence. We know that there are some women in particular who are not leaving violence situations because there is nowhere else for them to go, that the shelters are a capacity because there is nowhere else for these women and their children to go. And of course, it’s not just women, there are men who are impacted by family violence as as well. So we know that there is an extreme housing crisis in Australia at the moment. It’s very difficult to buy a house because of the rising interest rates and the cost of those properties. It’s difficult, if not impossible to find rental accommodation. And here we have almost out of control immigration. And whilst we have difficulties with where the housing’s going to be for these people, we also know that many, many businesses are crying out for workers. So there seems to be some sort of a mismatch if all these people are coming into the country and still more workers are needed, are they being appropriately matched into jobs. So it’s got two major issues coming together, you’ve got making sure that we have the skilled workforce that we need and that these people are going into jobs in key areas. But where are these people going to be accommodated? And once again from this government, you’ll see an absolute, absolute chaotic response to Australia’s needs.
JAYNIE SEAL: We do have to wrap it up by Shadow Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews and Full Stop CEO Haley Foster. Thank you both so much for your time.
ENDS