Spotlight on economic abuse - Good Shepherd Youth & Family ...

The ALRC recommended a host of changes to Department of Human Services practices to
address concerns for improving the agency identification of and response to family violence
and safety and decreasing opportunities for ongoing abuse and these are listed in full in
Appendix A of this report. Notably, in its considerations the ALRC (2011c, p. 131) included
financial security as an aspect of safety.
The child support system also interacts with the system of family assistance payments to
parents such that parents are obliged to seek child support payments to be eligible to
receive Family Tax Benefit. This means that a woman who does not seek child support from
an ex-partner due to fear of violence could be doubly disadvantaged by being denied Family
Tax Benefit. There is a family violence exemption enabling victims of family violence to opt
out of obtaining child support payments where this would place them at risk without a
consequent reduction to their Family Tax Benefit Part A payments and the recent ALRC
review recommended that this protective measure be strengthened through a number of
changes to the administrative Family Assistance Guide (ALRC 2011c). At the time of writing
it is not known what actions have been taken in response to these recommendations by the
Commonwealth Department of Human Services which has responsibility for this area.
Homelessness
Access to safe and affordable housing is a crucial issue for women escaping domestic and
family violence and while homelessness continues have major negative impacts there have
been some recent policy developments which have the objective of addressing these issues.
At the same time the broader context is one of chronic shortage of both emergency
accommodation and affordable housing in Australia.
Policies for addressing homelessness due to domestic and family violence are mostly
reactive or tertiary interventions as there is usually no awareness of the problem until a
woman leaves her home and seeks assistance (MacKenzie & Chamberlain 2003; Tually
2008). So, other than broad strategies for preventing domestic violence it has been
considered difficult to identify measures to prevent homelessness. However, in recent years
there have been some new initiatives which suggest better secondary interventions that may
increase the possibility for more women to remain in their homes safely after the perpetrator
of violence has left.
The Commonwealth’s White Paper on Homelessness, The Road Home (Australia 2008),
identified a need for expanded models of integrated support to enable women and children
experiencing domestic and family violence to remain safely in their own homes. New targets
for the Commonwealth and states in regard to reducing homelessness of women and
children were also set under the National Affordable Housing Agreement which is
underpinned by the National Partnership Agreement on Homelessness between the
Commonwealth, states and territories, which has recently been reviewed (COAG 2012,
accessed 19 July 2012 at ).
Prior to the 2008 national agreement, some states and territories had introduced ‘safe at
home’ models of responses to homelessness precipitated by domestic and family violence
and the White Paper identified this type of strategy as an area for development (Australia
2008, p. 330). This model relies on an integrated response to family violence by the criminal
justice and health and community services sectors. The model allows women and their
children to stay in the home by removing the perpetrator and in this it is a response which
assumes perpetrators should be held accountable for their actions (Tually et al 2008). This
model can provide women and children with stability and enable them to maintain social
support and to experience less disruption to their participation in employment and education.
It is supported by legal arrangements in all Australian states and territories which provide for
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