Save NFVPLS

You would likely have seen the media that the National Family Violence Prevention and Legal Services Forum (NFVPLS) has been advised that its $244,000-a-year funding would not be renewed past June 2020. This communication was made by the National Indigenous Australians Agency, headed up by the ‘Minister for Indigenous Australians’ Ken Wyatt and CEO Ray Griggs, and followed an independent evaluation undertaken by Charles Darwin University.

The report itself did not recommend defunding the peak body, but rather points to the need that additional funding was required to do the work required on a national scale.

The report noted the origins of NFVPLS, in that, it was formally initiated in May 2012. Regionalisation has since taken the original 31 services in the Forum to 14, of which 13 are members of NFVPLS.

The report stated that NFVPLS commenced at the request of its member services:

“… we have always seen the need to have a body that brings us all together, because we were all working in isolation prior to that… way back when there were 31 FVPLSs. The Attorney General’s Department, who was our funder at the time, used to bring us all together on an annual basis, and we developed our relationships from that. They would often contact each other by phone and that kind of stuff. But then we went to the Attorney General’s Department and said, “Look we see real value in you funding a secretariat for our forum”… We wrote to the AGs as a collective, and I think we secured about $50,000 at that point. Then from there we just built it and the government, our funders, saw value in what we were doing, being a collective and working together to build capacity within our individual organisations. [Funding now] … is about $244,000 annually…” (Internal Stakeholder)

The NFVPLS operates through a Charter. The purpose of the NFVPLS Charter is “to document the objectives of the National Forum and to include procedures to guide its operation.” The Charter was updated in May 2018, with changes approved by resolution of all NFVPLS members.

The NFVPLS has been extremely active on many national committees and forum, submitted to inquiries and provided evidence to ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children’s voices who experience family violence are heard and their experiences visible.

They are one of the founding members of the Coalition of Peaks and a signatory to a partnership with government on Closing the Gap.

In addition to running Ochre Ribbon Week, NFVPLS provides capacity building to members and ensures Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, who have been silenced for so long are at the table.

The NFVPLS has sought support from the community to resist this decision which effectively silences the most vulnerable members of our community from speaking out. National Chair Antoinette Braybrook, Deputy Chair Phynea Clarke and others from NFVPLS will be speaking with IndigenousX over the coming weeks to discuss the importance of the work being done and what the loss of this funding means in reality to the countless women and children that use the services that underpin the NFVPLS.

Interestingly, at recommendation 34, the Report that the government relied on stated ‘The Forum [NFVPLS] should increase the proportion of Forum and Secretariat resources (time in meetings, budgets, staff time allocations and Forum member time allocations) allocated to quality improvement of member services and support for member services. This may be achieved by bringing in additional resources dedicated to quality improvement projects or by reducing the proportion of resources allocated to policy and advocacy work, or some combination of the two.’

In fact, the nature of the recommendations were such that the growth of the NFVPLS was necessary including ensuring that there was a greater national approach that collaborates on resources, intellectual property and dissemination of support in an online capacity.

Notwithstanding the press release from Ken Wyatt’s office indicating that funding was being increased for frontline services – it is understood by NFVPLS that this is limited to a few member organisations and is not new money. This funding announcement says it secures financial certainty however, we understand it will be derived at the expense of other organisations or ‘underspends’ and with the announcement of de-funding NFVPLS, it is an act that silences the strong collective voices. The voices that have made a submission on ALRC Family Law Review Discussion Paper, a submission to the merger of the Federal Circuit Court and Family Court and a submission to Closing the Gap Refresh Process among a great many other advisory submissions.

One in three women in Australia has experienced physical violence at the hands of a man since the age of 15 and one in five women in Australia has experienced sexual violence at the hands of a man. These statistics are worsening, particularly for Indigenous women and children.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women nationally are 34 times more likely to be hopsitalised for family violence and 10 times more likely to die from a violent assault than other women in this country.

Eight out of 10 women aged 18-24 experienced harassment in public and women who are vocal about this problem experience threats of a violent and sexual nature. We have elected politicians that feel entitled to make legislative decisions about women’s bodies and make erroneous budgeting decisions that strip funding from domestic violence services but make significant commitments to racially offensive statues honouring murdering colonisers.

This is why National bodies like NFVPLS are so critical in ensuring our voices are heard and turned into action that influences policy change. Keep up to date with the campaign to #SaveNFVPLS by signing up here.