Where is the money? Waleed Aly demands answers from Malcolm Turnbull on domestic violence funding - Women's Agenda

Where is the money? Waleed Aly demands answers from Malcolm Turnbull on domestic violence funding

After delivering a stirring editorial on Tuesday night, last night The Project’s Waleed Aly was fearless in confronting Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull about domestic violence funding in a heated televised interview. 

“I’d like to put my hand up on behalf of a group of Australians who might be unable to, or are too afraid to. Or when they do ask for help, they’re too often turned away,” Aly said on Tuesday night. 

“I’m talking about Australian women, who are regularly beaten, abused and killed by Australian men, usually their partners.”

Aly used the segment to issue a call to the government to dedicate more funding to domestic violence. “Show me the money,” he demanded.

But hours later, when the budget was made public, it became clear that this call had been met with silence.

The budget allocated only $30 million to domestic violence prevention and support – to which the federal government will only contribute $16.7 million – against the backdrop of having recently cut funding to domestic violence education in NSW schools as well as having cut $300 million in funding to frontline support services across the country. 

So last night when The Project had Minister Turnbull on the show, Waleed Aly asked the question again: Where is the money?

“Thirty million dollars for something that you yourself as a government are referring to as a crisis. Do you genuinely believe that’s enough?” Aly asked.

Despite Aly’s persistent questions, Turnbull avoided answering directly.

“If that was all we were going to spend – we being all Australian governments – it wouldn’t be nearly enough, of course,” he responded.

“This is an absolutely critical issue.”

Turnbull then implied that there was in fact more money going into domestic violence, through indirect means.

“The fact is, there are hundreds of millions of dollars spent across government that address issues connected to and related to domestic violence – look at money that goes into homelessness for example.”

The issue of homelessness funding has been a fraught one in recent months, with the NSW government forcing the closure of many specialist homelessness services with the roll out of the controversial Going Home Staying Home reforms.

So Aly pushed back again.

“What we’re saying is there’s a services problem here. There’s a serious shortfall here in access to counselling hotlines, calls that are not being answered. These services that are not working together, they need the funding. Where’s the money?”

“What I’m saying is our government and other governments will provide the resources that are needed that will provide the support services that you need,” Turnbull responded.

Before answering the funding questions directly, however, Turnbull raised the issue of cultural attitudes towards domestic violence. Although it may have been a tactic to avoid Aly’s actual question, in the interest of giving credit where credit is due, Turnbull managed to capture the problem very well:

He said he have to rid Australia of “the attitude that domestic violence is somehow different to any other violence” and of “the idea that a man hitting a woman is somehow private business”.

“If that man was hitting someone in the street you’d be calling the police.”

“We have to have… zero tolerance for men hitting women.”

On this point, Turnbull is spot on. Unfortunately, as Aly’s co-host Gorgi Coghlan pointed out immediately, the government has done little to achieve this goal, and Turnbull’s words, while poignant, are contradicted by the government’s determination to cut domestic violence awareness services.

“Minister, I totally agree with you. I think that’s wonderful that you’re articulating that. But that is the reason why we need education programs in schools, and you’ve just cut funding to some of those programs in NSW,” she said.

As Turnbull himself pointed out during the interview, it is crucial that media personalities like Aly are speaking outabout domestic violence and taking it upon themselves to make a public call for help. But that call needs to be answered. It’s time that Turnbull, and the rest of his government, stopped avoiding the question.

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