Wednesday, 19 March 2025

 Rachel PAYNE (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (19:19): (1523) My adjournment is for the Minister for Prevention of Family Violence, and the action I seek is the establishment of community taskforces to address the family violence epidemic in the South-Eastern Metropolitan Region. We recently celebrated International Women’s Day. This year’s theme was ‘Accelerate action’, emphasising the importance of taking swift and decisive action to achieve gender equality. One of the many issues that would benefit from this kind of urgency is the issue of family violence. I have pushed for the Victorian government to introduce coercive control laws, address staffing shortages and provide greater protections for victim-survivors dealing with those who repeatedly breach family violence intervention orders. Unfortunately, family violence is an issue that is alarmingly prominent in parts of the South-Eastern Region I represent. The Casey area was recently the highest ranked local government area for the number of family violence incidents, with a total of 5564 reports in the year ending March 2024. Frankston and Greater Dandenong were also in the top 10. Statewide there is a family violence offender arrested every 90 minutes. Last year we saw Victoria Police undertake a five-month-long family violence blitz in the South-Eastern Metropolitan Region that led to 2700 arrests.

While it was promising to see family violence being taken so seriously, a law and order response often means an act of violence has already occurred, and it does little to proactively address the drivers of family violence. For this reason I encourage this government to invest in lived-experience family violence taskforces that are embedded within local communities and directly assist government decision-making. Taskforces like these help break cycles of abuse and foster inclusive and supportive communities that reject family violence. For a future free of family violence these things are essential. We have already seen the gender equality taskforce in Casey do great work on the prevention of violence towards women. However, dedicated taskforces must have a direct relationship with government decision-making to ensure that local lived experience meaningfully informs government decision-making. So I ask: will the minister commit to establishing community taskforces to address the family violence epidemic in the South-Eastern Metropolitan Region?