Yahoo Lifestyle Rosie Batty Wants A National Summit On Domestic Violence
Rosie Batty winning Australian of the Year. Photo: Getty Images
Australian of the Year Rosie Batty has backed calls for a major national crisis summit on domestic violence to be held in Australia as a matter of urgency this year.
The summit, which would be chaired by Prime Minister Tony Abbott and attended by major politicians, policy makers, domestic violence awareness advocates, lawyers, social workers and survivors, is part of Labor leader Bill Shorten’s proposed plan to combat domestic violence in Australia, supported by more than $70 million in funding.
An existing parliamentary panel on domestic violence, with an advisory board including premiers, police commissioners and Batty herself, has already been proposed by the Prime Minister in January. But the Opposition Leader and Batty both believe that this is not enough.
“[The panel] is not going to be the answer where it doesn’t have the voices of survivors and the people who work alongside them,” Shorten told the ABC this morning.
Shorten has also said that if Labor won the next election, he would pledge more than $70 million in funding to ensure domestic violence victims are able to access key facilities and services including shelters, solicitors and financial aid.
The breakdown of these funds includes $50 million allocated to legal services, $5 million to housing grants and $8 million to be spent on “perpetrator mapping”.
This spending is in line with Batty’s own ideas about combatting violence against women. In a heartfelt speech on the ABC’s Q&A program last week, Batty argued that more time and money needs to be pledged to the police so that they can better identify, monitor and intervene in “red flag” domestic violence cases.
Pick up our April issue, on sale tomorrow, to see our photoshoot with Rosie Batty and her fellow Australians of the Year.
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