THE HON MARK DREYFUS KC MP
ATTORNEY-GENERAL
CABINET SECRETARY
MEMBER FOR ISAACS
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
PRESS CONFERENCE
MELBOURNE
SATURDAY, 7 SEPTEMBER 2024
SUBJECTS: Meeting of National Cabinet; Legal Assistance Funding; CFMEU.
ATTORNEY-GENERAL MARK DREYFUS: ATTORNEY-GENERAL: Good morning. The Prime Minister made some very significant announcements yesterday following National Cabinet that demonstrate the Albanese Government's commitment to ending violence against women and children in a generation. Violence against women and children is not acceptable, and women and children are not responsible for putting an end to it. The Prime Minister announced a $4.7 billion package to respond to the national crisis of family, domestic and sexual violence and support legal assistance. The centrepiece of this announcement is a Commonwealth investment of $3.9 billion in a new National Access To Justice Partnership. This is the biggest single Commonwealth investment in legal assistance ever. There is $800 million in additional funding, which is going to be delivered, as I've said, through a new National Access To Justice Partnership. Every part of the legal assistance sector will benefit from this funding. The legal assistance sector, of course, includes the Legal Aid Commissions, Women's Legal Services, Community Legal Services, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services and Family Violence Prevention Legal Services. All parts of the legal assistance sector are going to benefit from this biggest ever investment by the Commonwealth in legal assistance services. The National Access To Justice Partnership is going to include pay parity for people working in Community Legal Centres that will help to attract and it will help to retain staff working in Community Legal Centres. The Albanese Government has also committed to ongoing funding ending the destructive cycle of uncertainty for legal assistance sectors. The Liberals oversaw a decade of chronic underfunding in the legal assistance sector, and worse, left a funding cliff, meaning that from the first of July 2025 the Liberal Government had provided no money at all for the legal assistance sector. That's obviously an unacceptable situation, and that's why the announcement yesterday by the Prime Minister of ongoing funding is so important. Not merely a five year agreement with the states and territories, but ongoing commitment from the Commonwealth to funding of the legal assistance sector. Because of the funding uncertainty under the former government, frontline legal services were unable to plan for the future. Now they can, because of the funding uncertainty left by the former government frontline legal services were unable to hire staff or get new premises. Now they can. It's a very, very important step forward. I know it's been welcomed by the sector, because that certainty of funding is something that the legal assistance sector has been seeking for many years. Legal assistance services help victims and survivors safely leave and recover from violent relationships. They help victims and survivors access services and financial assistance. They help victims and survivors get secure housing. They help create safe arrangements for children and so much more. And I want to thank all of the many workers on the frontline who have advocated for the sector and for the rights of the thousands of Australians who are helped by these services every year.
On another matter that arose in the National Cabinet announcements yesterday, in recognition of the critical importance of information sharing in strengthening system responses to high risk and serial perpetrators the National Cabinet also agreed, and This is a matter that requires the cooperation of the States and Territories. The National Cabinet also agreed to continue and enhance information sharing arrangements between the family law family violence and child protection systems. And what this does is to build on our landmark reforms to the Family Law Act which have enhanced a focus on safety for people in violent and destructive relationships. The Prime Minister also announced new commitments from the Commonwealth and the States and Territories towards a five year National Partnership Agreement on family domestic and sexual violence responses. And I would say overall, that these National Cabinet announcements are a really important step forward in the work against violence against women and children. I'm very pleased with the announcements, in particular on the National Access To Justice Partnership that we are going to put in place. I'm going to be working with State and Territory Attorneys-General through to the end of the year to nail down the last details of this national new National Access To Justice Partnership. But the key to this is the largest ever increase in Commonwealth funding and the largest ever Commonwealth funding for the legal assistance sector. It's going to set up this really important sector, help this sector do the really important work that it does for women and children going forward into the future. Very happy to take your questions.
JOURNALIST: Yesterday's package includes funding for innovative approaches to stop violence escalating, including the role of alcohol and gambling. Can you elaborate on what these sort of approaches might look like?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: What was agreed with the States and Territories yesterday was work that needs to be done in partnership by the States and Territories with the Commonwealth, which include work on high risk perpetrators. This is involving some innovative work on what can be done, particularly involving new police responses. So it's not just a matter of making sure that our existing services are adequately funded, and we are trying to do that, it's a matter of exploring new ways of dealing with this problem. The other part of the trials that was announced yesterday are domestic violence action centres, which are designed again to be cooperative activities with state police and Commonwealth authorities. So we're going to keep looking at new ways of ending the scourge of violence against women and children. I'm not saying that we've found all the answers, even now. If people have further suggestions, they will, of course, be looked at in the future. But yesterday's announcements included not only new funding for existing services in the sector, very important, but also some new money to trial new ways of going about this is it.
JOURNALIST: As simple as just putting up barriers between perpetrators and alcohol and gambling products?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: Nothing simple in this space, but one of the agreements very positively that occurred yesterday, and as part of the announcement made by the Prime Minister yesterday, was that the States are going to look at alcohol regulation, at alcohol laws, at all of the arrangements around sale of alcohol. And let's hope that something comes of that work that the States and Territories have agreed to do.
JOURNALIST: How close is the government to settling on a final form of a gambling ad ban.
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: My colleague Michelle Rowland has been working hard, consulting with community groups and with industry, and you can expect to see decisions made, but I'm not going to go into her territory there.
JOURNALIST: So just funding, specifically the numbers $3.9 billion and there's an $800 million additional is that $3.9 billion on a consolidation of existing monies, plus $800 million of new money. Or how exactly is it being divvied up?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: There is $800 million of new Commonwealth funding that's going to be going into the legal assistance sector to give the total of $3.9 billion and it includes money for pay parity. It includes money for indexation. And one of the things that's going to be under discussion over the balance of this year with State and Territory Attorneys-General is the precise split, if you like, as to where that $800 million of new money is going. But of course, to be clear, these are existing services. We have Legal Aid Commissions, we have Community Legal Centres, we have Women's Legal Services, we have Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services, all of them do fantastic work helping Australians in need. In particular, they do fantastic work in the family, domestic and sexual violence area. One of the real incentives behind this announcement yesterday is the recognition of the tremendous work that frontline legal assistance services do helping women and children and it's going to be directed, obviously, a lot of the new funding, to making sure that services for women and children are enhanced.
JOURNALIST: On a national offender registry, you spoke about information sharing, I think, last year, at National Cabinet, this year, two times now, a national offender registry has been spoken about. How far away are we specifically on something like that? And perhaps, why hasn't it already been established, if there seems to be a, you know, political consensus that it would be a good thing?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: We've already got a national criminal intelligence system. This is in my capacity as the Minister responsible for the Australian Federal Police, the National Criminal Intelligence System is already in place. Initially, four states, four jurisdictions, participated in the National Criminal Intelligence System. Now all states are participating actively, which means that when police attend, they can on their phones, on their laptops as they drive up to attend, in response to a call, they've got real time information, current information about who's going to be in that house, about what prior convictions or prior offences might have been alleged against people at that location or in that house. So that's the National Criminal Intelligence System. The information sharing that the Prime Minister was talking about in the announcement yesterday has, in part, already been dealt with by the Family Law Act amendments that we passed last year that came into effect on the sixth of May and will be further assisted by the additional funding for the information system. What this is about is making sure that family law proceedings by judges in the Family Court or decisions that are being made by state courts in relation to apprehended violence, orders or decisions that are being made by child welfare authorities are done in full knowledge of what the other parts of the system are doing. That's what information sharing is about. So, all of those matters are in hand. Our objective here is to make sure that police and state authorities and courts are all informed about the backgrounds of the people that they are dealing with, that they are aware of previous incidents. And right now, we've got a bill in the Parliament, which I introduced in the last sitting week, which is directed at requiring judges making parenting decisions and property decisions under the Family Law Act to take domestic family and sexual violence into account. So right across the board, we've got measures here that are designed to ensure that family, domestic and sexual violence is front of mind for judges and for government decision makers and for police when they are going about their work.
JOURNALIST: Can I ask about you that the CFMEU. The Administrator has come out today, saying that eight officials have already been suspended, there are multiple investigations already in train in the first two weeks in his role. Is this vindication that it was the right decision to put the union into administration?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: I'm the Attorney-General. I am very conscious that there is a proceeding in the High Court of Australia directed at both the legislation and the appointment of the Administrator, and I simply can't comment, while that matter is pending in the High Court of Australia.
JOURNALIST: Attorney-General, it's Amanda Copp from Nine News here. Obviously, this is a huge amount of money, and I'm sure very welcome for a lot of the services that deal with domestic and family violence. But do you think that money is enough here? What needs to happen when it comes to law reform, and specifically, where are we up to when it comes to bail law reform that's been talked about for a long time, but that hasn't, hasn't quite seemed to get off the ground yet?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: I think we have to always keep looking at law reform. I'd like to see myself as a law reformer. Certainly, since we've come to office after the May 2022 election I've got right down to the task of reforming the Family Law Act, reforming a whole range of other aspects of matters that affect family, domestic and sexual violence. I've worked with the States and Territories by re-establishing the Standing Council of Attorneys-General and the Police Ministers Council, both of which meet regularly, and both of which I chair, and our constant subject for discussion at those Police Ministers Council meetings and the Attorneys-General Council has been what can what more can be done in law reform? In addition, as your question raises, to more funding, what more can be done? We've got to keep laws under review. We've got to try and get proper measurement, proper statistics. And then when we learn from those statistics, when we learn from that information, apply it to adjusting if they need to be adjusted, criminal laws, bail laws, laws about coercive control, which, of course, is another matter that has come out of the work that has been done in the Standing Council of Attorneys-General, which is something that is now being acted on. We got to agreement on National Principles of Coercive Control, and we've now seen States progressively legislating to give effect in their State law to those National Principles of Coercive Control. So sorry for the long answer, but there's a lot of work that's already been done. There's other work that's ahead of us. But of course, we have to look not just at funding. We've got to look at the laws that are applicable to family, domestic and sexual violence, and make sure that the laws that our police are enforcing and the laws that our judges and magistrates are applying, are as good as they can be.
JOURNALIST: Do the laws need to be stronger in your opinion?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: I wouldn't so much say stronger. Of course, we always need strong laws but we need laws that work. We need laws that are appropriate to deal with, in this context, family, domestic and sexual violence. I've practiced law for decades before I came into the parliament, for a very long time it was the case that the Australian legal system just didn't engage properly with the scourge of domestic, family and sexual violence. And I'd say now it does. We didn't have, decades ago, Apprehended Violence Orders that enabled the victim, survivors of family, domestic and sexual violence, to go to a court to get an order against the perpetrator, to stop the perpetrator approaching them and to keep them safe. Now we do. We didn't have Principles of Coercive Control until a bit over a year ago. Now we do, and they're being implemented in legislation by States and Territories. So, I think we've got to keep thinking, as I said in my answer to the previous question, we've got to keep thinking about what the legal system looks like, make sure that our laws are appropriate and absolutely make sure that police have got laws to enforce and apply that are appropriate, and that magistrates and judges have got laws. Laws that they can use to keep women and children safe, because that's our overall objective. We want to end the scourge of family and domestic violence, and we want to keep women and children safe. And it's not the job of women and children to end the scourge of domestic violence. It's the job of men and it's the job of governments to make sure that our laws are appropriate.
JOURNALIST: When you say that it's the job of men to stop this kind of violence, do you think that the legal system needs to back that in potentially punishing or deterring the men who commit these crimes more harshly than perhaps the laws are currently?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: There are already very serious penalties available. If it were just a matter of ensuring that there were appropriate penalties - and there is already the possibility of life imprisonment for the crime of murder in this country, there is already the possibility of many years of imprisonment for serious assaults. It's not just a matter of penalties. It's a matter of enforcement. It's a matter of investigation. It's a matter of working on ways that we can achieve men's behaviour change. Overwhelmingly, this is a crime committed by men against women and children. So, I make no apology for talking about needing to change men's behaviour, but it's not just a matter about penalties. We've already got very, very strong penalties available for the crimes that are committed in family, domestic and sexual violence. What we need to be looking at is more resources for frontline services, and we're doing that. More training, more access to counselling, more men's behaviour change. We know we've got to do more. We are doing more, and we've got to keep looking to make sure that the that the measures that we taking are the appropriate ones.
JOURNALIST: Chris Minns yesterday said that there needs to be a relaxation in restrictions on hiring frontline workers in the current labour market. The states can't hit that target of 500 frontline workers currently, he'd like to see that relaxed. I think only South Australia is on track. Was there any discussion about relaxing those criteria to get more frontline workers on board?
ATTORNEY-GENERAL: This is something that the Premiers and the Chief Ministers of the two Territories discussed with the Prime Minister yesterday. I think there's an acknowledgement that we need to get on with the hiring of frontline workers. What I'm looking to do in the sector that I'm responsible for, which is the legal assistance sector, is see that by the provision of this very large amount of new funding, by the provision of particular funding for pay parity and indexation, we are going to see the hiring of new staff in the legal assistance sector, and I'd hope the expansion of services, because that, of course, is what this funding is directed to.
ENDS
