Eliminating family and sexual violence is a key priority for the Tasmanian Liberal Government, which is why the Tasmanian Budget 2022-23 includes $12.5 million for our Third Family and Sexual Violence Action Plan.
Since the launch of our first, nation-leading Action Plan in 2015, and under our second Action Plan launched in 2019, the Tasmanian Government has taken a whole-of-Government, multi-agency approach to the issue.
We have invested over $300 million in responding to family and sexual violence, including $63 million for specific measures under our first and second Action Plans and the $19 million in direct funding and $59 million in indirect funding we spend to address family and sexual violence every year.
Our third Family and Sexual Violence Action Plan is currently being developed in consultation with the Government’s Family and Sexual Violence Consultative Group, key stakeholders, and people with lived experience, and includes:
*The Hearing Lived Experience Survey;
*Establishing a Victim-Survivor Advisory Council;
*Targeted workshops with a focus on diverse lived experience including children and young people, people with disability, CALD communities, rural and regional communities, LGBTIQ+ and older Tasmanians;
*Partnering with Tasmanian Aboriginal Community organisations; and
*Public written submissions.
Pleasingly, we have already received 640 responses to our Hearing Lived Experience Survey which is open until February 2023, surpassing the number of surveys we received for our last Action Plan.
Social media interest in the survey has also been fantastic with our social media advertising campaign generating 1,225,180 impressions across Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat, reaching 199,559 unique users.
The $12.5 million in the 22-23 State Budget for the first year of the five year Action Plan represents a 40 per cent increase on the annual investment under our current Action Plan.
One of the key priority actions in the new Action Plan will be a commitment of increased recurrent core funding for Tasmania’s nine specialist family and sexual violence services with five year contracts to provide greater certainty and increased operational capacity to respond to demand.
We want to strengthen service delivery to ensure that Tasmanians who experience family and sexual violence have access to specialist support services that meet their needs and circumstances.
This is why services including Engender Equality, Huon Domestic Violence Service, RAIN, Safe Choices, Yemaya, the Sexual Assault Support Service, Laurel House, the Australian Childhood Foundation and the Family Violence Counselling and Support Service, will receive additional core funding, with a total of nearly $75 million to be provided for these services over the next five years.
The Plan also includes new actions to further refine our efforts towards preventing and responding to family and sexual violence, whilst putting the voices of victim-survivors at the centre of our approach.
New actions include $15.1 million for new Multidisciplinary Centres as well as $3.7 million to provide next generation technology and instruments for our scientists to ensure higher quality evidence for court proceedings and increased capacity for storage of evidence, including sexual evidence kits.
This means that victim-survivors can have their forensic samples taken, knowing that their evidence will be kept indefinitely until they feel ready to report to police.
Every Tasmanian has the right to live free from violence, and the Tasmanian Budget 2022-23 will continue our important work of eliminating family and sexual violence.
More Media Releases from the Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence