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The government has dumped the responsibility and immense pressure of addressing the scourge of domestic and family violence on not-for-profits but has left them with barely enough funds to survive, a lawyer and chairman of a women’s health centre has argued.
When handing down a national plan to end violence against women within a generation, the Albanese government rightly labelled domestic and family violence a “national crisis”. At the time of writing, nine women have been killed this year alone.
According to Destroy the Joint, which has kept a tally of women killed since 2012, last year was the worst 12 months on record for gendered violence, with 79 killed. That statistic equates to about one woman killed every four days by a current or former partner.
In the 2024 federal budget, almost $1 billion was included in an anti-domestic violence package. This year, there have been multimillion-dollar investments, including $277.7 million to create about 500 new jobs in the community sector and for frontline workers.
A further $70 million was allocated to existing services, and $21.4 million was invested over three years to improve a victim-survivor’s engagement with the justice system. The latter will also inform a “broader response” to the Australian Law Reform Commission’s inquiry into the justice system’s responses to sexual violence.
Speaking to Lawyers Weekly ahead of the 2025 budget being handed down, principal lawyer and Illawarra practice leader Jessica Koot from Watts McCray Lawyers said the government has not been treating domestic and family violence “as seriously as they need to”.
“I think the government are relying on not-for-profits to step into that space, rather than the government stepping in themselves and taking responsibility for creating change,” Koot said.
Koot is also a chairwoman for the Illawarra Women’s Health Centre, which runs the Women’s Trauma Recovery Centre in Wollongong. It took the centre more than seven years to get funding, and Koot said they are still waiting for long-term promises from the government.
The centre was designed to provide long-term support for women who are grappling with the trauma of gendered violence, noting that women without longer-lasting help “are by far at a significant disadvantage”. Koot said this should “impact everyone”.
“The government has come through with funding for us eventually, but the pressure on making it all work is on us as not-for-profit volunteers, board members, and staff who deserve to be paid a lot more than what they’re paid. The government can do better,” she said.
This funding gap also exists at the legal aid level, where Koot said victim-survivors are having a “really hard time” finding a lawyer who has the capacity to do it well, “rather than having to rush it through because your funding is so extremely limited”.
In a report delivered last October, National Legal Aid said $484 million in funding per year was required to meet the “unmet demand” for legal aid by expanding the availability of family and civil law and increasing private practitioner fees.
Director Katherine McKernan said legal aid “remains chronically underfunded”, and there continues to be a “longstanding gap between legal assistance need and legal assistance funding”.
Koot said that with less money available at legal aid, “we’re seeing less and less lawyers able to afford to do the work”.
“For most lawyers, [who] want to actually, genuinely make a difference, it’s hard work, it’s emotional work, it’s tolling and stressful. Family lawyers are doing the work because we want to make a difference for people, and we want to make a better world for everyone.
“But we also can’t work for free, and we have to be able to cover and meet our expenses,” Koot said.
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Naomi Neilson is a senior journalist with a focus on court reporting for Lawyers Weekly.
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