Breaking new ground in Australian research: how will the report be used?
The information in this report will be important to improving monitoring and evaluation of domestic, family and sexual violence activities in Australia and ultimately improving outcomes for the same in the future.
Our consultation with key stakeholders in the domestic, family, and sexual violence space in Australia, including ANROWS and the Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commission, revealed that this report fills a major gap that currently exists in the public body of knowledge regarding domestic, family and sexual violence knowledge in Australia.
In preparing the Australian report, it became immediately apparent that there is currently no source of information which monitors government funding of domestic, family and sexual violence in Australia. This is notwithstanding the Commonwealth Government's ambitious targets to reduce DFSV under the current National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022-2032, and the corresponding Outcomes Framework, which aims to eliminate violence against women in one generation, and to reduce female victims of intimate partner homicide by 25% in 10 years.
The report calls for a national framework to track all Commonwealth, State and Territory Government funding on DFSV, which corresponds to the National Plan, to allow greater transparency and accountability for public investment in addressing this complex issue. This will enable governments and non-government DFSV services to better evaluate programs and target funding to improve outcomes over time.
Why MinterEllison?
One of the key focus areas of our Pro Bono and Community Investment Program is addressing domestic and family violence, as a leading cause of homelessness.
We use a complex systems-based approach, recognising that domestic and family violence intersects various social and economic systems and cross sector collaboration (government, private and social sectors) can be leveraged to improve outcomes.
We have a number of long term partnerships with domestic, family and sexual violence service providers nationally.
Our approach
In order to produce the required information, we manually reviewed all publicly available Commonwealth Government budget papers between 2010 and 2023 to quantify and analyse trends in funding of domestic, family and sexual violence initiatives by the Commonwealth Government in Australia. This report is the first attempt by anyone to do this.
The report has been welcomed by thought leaders in the domestic, family and sexual violence sector in Australia, including Australia's National Research Organisation for Women's Safety (ANROWS). It is hoped that the report will form an important platform to call for an agreed national framework to monitor and evaluate public investment into domestic, family and sexual violence going forward.
