E&OE TRANSCRIPT
DOORSTOP
CAIRNS
THURSDAY, 7 MAY 2026

Topics: Cairns Leaving Violence Program Regional Trial; Housing; Immigration

MATT SMITH, MEMBER FOR LEICHHARDT: Thank you all for coming on this morning, and thank you to Minister Plibersek for being here today, and for Rachaelle and the rest of the team at RAATSIC for their generous hospitality. Today we have a really important announcement regarding the Leaving Violence Program. We know that when women are trying to leave a abusive relationship, it can take up to 17 times before they successfully go. But a part of that is what is holding you back, and that can be what support is available, what financial support is available. Where am I going to go? Am I going to be able to look after my children? Am I going to have the things that I need in life? Be it nappies, baby formula, toys, all of these things are questions in a woman's head as she's preparing to leave, and all these things can hold her back. What this program does is empower women to get out of abusive relationships and to begin their lives the best way that they can. And this, places like RAATSIC offer that level of support. They're in community every day. They're building those relationships, and they've been working with over 800 people right across the region. I'm really proud of the work that RAATSIC is doing and the lives that they are changing one day at a time, and this is a vote of confidence in the work that they're doing and allows this program to continue on for another 12 months. With that, I'll hand it over to Minister Plibersek, who will go over some more of the details of the program.


TANYA PLIBERSEK, MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES: Thanks so much, member for Leichardt, Matt Smith. It's always such a pleasure to be here to visit you and to see the great commitment you have to serving the people of Cairns and the Cape and the Torres Strait. And thank you to RAATSIC for having us here today and to telling us about the amazing work they've been doing with the Leaving Violence Program. All too often people ask, ‘why didn't she leave?’ When what they should be asking is, ‘where would she go?’ and ‘what help is available?’ We know that women experiencing family and domestic violence think about everyone around them. How would they get the kids to school? Where would they live? Would the kids be safe? Will she be safe? What are the implications of leaving and what support is available? This program helps women answer those questions for themselves if they are considering leaving a family or domestic violence situation. This program has already been incredibly successful. Over the last year, around 800 people have been assisted when making that very difficult decision to protect themselves from family and domestic violence. Already, 800 families have been changed because of the support that RAATSIC been able to offer across the vast territory of northern Australia and northern Queensland. Today's announcement is an investment of an additional $18 million to continue this amazing work, supporting people face to face at the most difficult time of their life. We're very, very pleased to be able to partner with RAATSIC and to see the success of their work in protecting women and children from family and domestic violence.

RACHAELLE MANN, REMOTE AREA AND ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRAIT ISLANDER CORPORATION CEO: We just want to thank the federal government. Having the confidence and faith in RAATSIC being able to continue this service, I don't think that's measurable across our catchments and our regions and our communities. The work that we've been doing over the last several years in this area, we've been doing a lot of focusing on getting the messaging out there, what the program is about, and getting that connection strong, that we can actually reach more people, that we can support more in this area, so being able to continue to deliver that and actually to increase that service delivery, we're finding the importance to that, like I said, it's immeasurable. Being able to undertake a face to face service in a community by an ACCO is something that, we would see that if we weren't doing that, we wouldn't see the rates of service delivery that we're seeing now. Andrea can probably go through some of the highlights as to our service delivery modelling and why it's so important that we continue to be an ACCO led, ACCO run program delivery, and the fact that we've now increased from Cairns, Townsville, Palm Islands, Cape, Torres, Mornington Island, down to the Gulf to Mount Isa. It's a massive catchment for us. So as you can appreciate, being able to have a face to face service delivery model in such a huge area with ACCO staff is something that we're actually very proud to be able to deliver and undertake.


ANDREA MILLS, REMOTE AREA AND ABORIGINAL AND TORRES STRIAT ISLANDER CORPORATION LEAVING VIOLENCE PROGRAM TEAM LEAD: So being an ACCO, which is an organisation of community people led by community, which is very important to be face to face in the community to face those to assist community people in facing barriers that they face with limited services and resources, such as being able to get their approval of their applications done, of supporting them, in supplying their supporting documents, in identifications and things like that. Being able to build that report so they're comfortable with us in order to come forward to share their story, because it might be their first time that they ever come to a service to be able to share their domestic violence story. Being that culturally appropriate and safe person in community organisation for the people. So just, I'm touching on a good news story, so some one particular story that I can remember is we've supported a woman who's then transitioned out of community, gotten a new rental within another place, to then be able to fly her and her children out of community and into her new rental and set up her new home, and then we're doing the referrals to be able to set her and link her in with the right services to then hit those short term and long term goals of the factors around DV so that she, he or she, or whoever it is, the victim, survivor who might be experiencing the domestic violence, for them to try and help not to go back to that relationship. So that's just yeah, some of the things that we do. It is a 12 week case management, sorry program, where we offer support letters and referrals into other places. We also do offer six free counselling sessions that are not a part of the financial funding within the package. So that's it in a nutshell.

JOURNALIST: [inaudible]

RACHAELLE MANN: Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Community Controlled Organisations. So what that means is that RAATSIC is community driven and community led. So for example, all of our communities are individual communities. We don't roll out a delivery model across our catchment. We actually identify a delivery model that is individual to that specific community. That decision making, how we lead our service delivery in those communities, that is led by that community, through feedback, through our board, through our directors, and that's, that's probably the difference, if you want that breakdown of understanding.


JOURNALIST: And maybe, what are some of the different barriers that people in communities face that people maybe in town don’t?

RACHAELLE MANN: So look, I think some of the differences you'll find if we didn't have a face to face, community led approach, firstly, you wouldn't get them applying, because, one, they may not have access to a computer, access to a phone, plus they actually wouldn't even know about the program, so they wouldn't even know what's out there. Then one of the other barriers we see quite a lot is the capability to make an application of their own without support. Another barrier we see is documentation of identification. That's a very huge barrier that we support them directly with as well. The other, then the other barriers are things like we're able to connect them to other services. We've got long standing relationships with other service providers within those specific areas. So we can do referrals external, as RAATSIC has quite a significant footprint, so we're also able to do referrals internally as well across our state led programs. So we have a number of state led programs which are focused on family support services. So we do have a lot of LVP clients we can refer to those, but we're also actually have clients from those programs, which we can then identify and refer to the LVP program. So if we didn't have that presence in community by the right staff, and we weren't face to face, you wouldn't have the clients and the packages being rolled out that you see. Our numbers are dependent on that service delivery modelling.

JOURNALIST: And is word getting out? Like you’re confident people in community  [inaudible]

RACHAELLE MANN: We have gone above and beyond our targets. We've had to ask for a release of more package money within this financial year, which has been absolutely supported, and we appreciate that, with no pushback. So we've actually met our target for the financial year. We're not even finished that financial year yet, and we're already tracking that will be met as well. So we've seen since implementation to now, we've achieved our targets and increased those significantly every single time. The more presence we're having, the more messaging that's getting out, the more, the more we're seeing that our target numbers are actually, well and truly below what we're actually seeing on the ground and what we're delivering.

JOURNALIST: And it's a face to face model. If someone particularly, I'm thinking, the smaller communities, if they're a bit concerned about disclosing their situation to someone within their community, do they have the option of talking potentially to someone from somewhere else?

RACHAELLE MANN: Yeah. So look, majority of our staff, we have a staffing base of 84 FTEs. Majority of those are based here. We choose to do that staffing model simply because that way, our staff are not actually living in the community. Therefore, the community themselves feel more confidential and supportive around their applications, because they, they're not having to see that person living in their environment. They don't know their family members, so it just provides that additional layer of confidentiality across that.

JOURNALIST: When they get to the end of the 12 weeks, what happens then? I assume there's still some support.

JOURNALIST: We do a very strong emphasis on referrals to other agencies depending on their need. Obviously, we know that not every, not every situation, stays out of that circumstance. Some do go back. But then we also have our other services that can kick in and support that as well. So a large focus towards the end of that  12 week period is connecting them to any other services out there that they may be relevant to, and putting that support in place. That could be therapeutic counselling. We do a lot of support around the social emotional wellbeing space. We even have a child witness domestic violence counselling service. So as much as we can support, we put in place just to sort of give them the best success at leaving that situation on an ongoing basis.

JOURNALIST: Do most people have to physically relocate to another town or community?

RACHAELLE MANN: The majority don’t, no. This is when your safety planning and risk assessing is critical. So from the minute they make contact with us, we're already commencing the risk assessment safety planning process. That doesn't stop, that's we have a plan developed, we risk assess, but we continue that throughout the entire 12 weeks as their circumstances change. So it's critical that we focus on that, because majority of people don't want to leave their community. It's their home, it's their family. They don't want to move to somewhere where they don't have those connections. We also find if we're focusing on too much, on removing them and getting them out, then the success rate's going to drop, because then they want to go back home. They want the support. So we actually focus on them continuing to be in their community, but to continue to do that in a safe way for themselves and their children, because at the end of the day, we have to support the client and the client's needs. It's not about RAATSIC, it's about those clients. So that risk assessment, safety planning is a critical tool for this program.

JOURNALIST: Where does overcrowding in housing rank among the challenges that you face in trying to help people get into a safe space?


RACHAELLE MANN: That’s probably the biggest challenge across every program we deliver, and it's always going to be. No matter what program you look at, we have the challenges of overcrowding in place. So look, that's not something we can control. Unfortunately, that's quite a large area of responsibility. All we can do is do our best, and what we're funded to do to support the families as best we can. One of the things we have started focusing on, on RAATSIC, is focusing some of our funding on male specific workers. So what we have found in the past within programs is a lot of focus is on our women. What we have found some success with over the last 12 months is by also picking up our men within that family unit. We've actually found across those other programs that we're getting a much better success rate. We're getting more access to our women because our men aren't feeling as threatened by that support, and we're including them on that journey as well. So we absolutely have started focusing and directing some of our funding and some of our service delivery towards working with the men specifically.

JOURNALIST: And you mentioned a quite a broad geographic area before, are you [inaudible]?

RACHAELLE MANN: Massive. Top of Queensland, and that's it. Look what we've, what we're actually saying when you're talking about stats and tracking. We have areas we're currently in a massive recruitment phase. We've got areas we haven't even touched yet that's within our new catchment areas. So once we hit those, we feel those stats are just going to go through the roof. We will end up with a base of within this program, I think you're looking at about 32 staff alone in this one specific programme. But when you look at the size of the area and the fact that we are completely focused on in community, face to face service delivery you need that staffing to be able to cover that. Travel is also a massive component for us within our financial budget, as you can appreciate, and we do that by planes, but we also do that by vehicles as well. We do drive as much as we can in the dry season. We have nine office sites across our catchment area. So that may not be all relevant to LVP, but that's across all of our programs, but therefore LVP can tap into all of our sites within that area.


JOURNALIST: I’ve got an adjacent question. We have a Mayor in far north Queensland, the Mayor of Lockhart River, who's been in that role, I think, for nearly two years, while facing serious domestic violence charges. When you're talking about empowering people to feel that they can do something about the situation, does it send the wrong message to remain in such an important leadership role while these allegations are hanging over you?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I'm not going to make comment about individual cases. I would say that it is really important for leaders, political leaders, community leaders, to demonstrate through their behaviour that they support a society that's free from violence.

JOURNALIST: And we heard overcrowding of housing is one of the biggest challenges that service providers are facing here, but what can you as a federal government do to alleviate that, particularly in these indigenous communities, where a lot of the housing is decades past its useful life?

MINISTER PLIBESEK: Overcrowding is a problem that exacerbates all sorts of social issues, and it's happening in remote communities around Australia. We are investing, as a Commonwealth government, in remote housing, particularly with state and territory administrations. In the Northern Territory for example, we're building 2700 additional homes between now and 2030 with the Northern Territory Government, that's a $4 billion investment. We know that we need to keep building in remote communities and in communities right across Australia. We've got a housing construction problem in this country, and that is most acute in remote communities, but we see it in our cities and suburbs as well, and that's why we've got a $43 billion housing investment program, and we aim to see 1.2 million homes built across Australia. It's also the reason that we're really trying to help people into a home of their own. Our 5% deposit program and 2% deposit if someone's, for example, leaving a violent relationship. The fact that someone can buy a place of their own that changes lives really quite fundamentally. I spoke to a woman yesterday who had to leave a violent relationship, she was living on an island in Torres Strait. She came to Cairns, she was able to put a deposit on a small apartment for her and her children with that 2% deposit program, and she was paying about the same in a mortgage as she would have been paying in rent, but the place is hers. And in the time that she's owned it, the value of the property is almost double. She's going to use that to buy a bigger place for her and her kids, as her kids get older. The difference between having that and having to shift homes every time the landlord decides to put the rent up, you know the difference that that makes to someone's life without that two per cent deposit program she wouldn't have had that option and that security. I heard from another woman just earlier this week who's had to move three times in the last couple of years, no fault of her own. You know, things change with the landlord. Each time she's had to move it's cost her around $3,000, new bond, removalist truck, all the rest of it. She's had to go into debt to borrow money to pay those removalist fees. It shows how very quickly people can get into economic insecurity if they're moving properties all the time. So we absolutely want to help more Australians into a home of their own in the same way that their parents and grandparents once aspired to, and we need to keep up our focus on building additional housing stock in this country as well.


JOURNALIST: A leaked internal document reveals Angus Taylor's mulling the policy the pub network sees migration to 150,000. Is this too low?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, what you know for certain is that Angus Taylor's immigration policy will be designed as a political contest with One Nation. It won't be designed to be in the national interest. It's also worth remembering that the two biggest years for visas being issued were under the Coalition government, 9 million visas issued two years running, and now, because they've got a problem with One Nation, they're completely changing their policies. We are consistently putting the national interest at the heart of our decision making. We will make decisions about immigration to this country based on the skills that we need, migration system that is has integrity, that makes sure that we're getting the right numbers in the right places. We're not just focused on a on a political contest with one nation. We're focused on our nation and our national interest.

JOURNALIST: Do we need overseas workers in our workforce?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, I think anybody will tell you, first of all, we should be training Australians. That's why we've got our free TAFE course that's so far helped well over 600,000 people get a qualification. We need those people in the building industry, in particular, but right across a whole range of industries. You know, Cairns is beautiful, but I know that there's always demand up here for hospitality, for agricultural workers, for those people in the building trades, for a whole range of people in the trades. First thing we do is we train more Australians, but they'll always be a case for skilled migration to fill temporary gaps in our labour market, and we need to do that too.

ENDS