NSW Parliament intervenes before 20 Specialist Child Workers in domestic violence refugees lose their job

Following a Greens motion unanimously passed in the NSW Parliament Upper House yesterday, the NSW Government has today confirmed that they will extend funding for 20 Specialist Workers for Children and Young People which was due to expire on June 30 2023.

The Minister has today confirmed that funding for an additional 12 months has now been granted.

The motion, moved by Abigail Boyd, Greens spokesperson for Gendered Violence and Abuse, called on the Minister for the Prevention of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault to urgently grant continued funding for the 20 specialist child workers, who without this funding were set to lose their jobs working in priority domestic violence refuges as soon as next week.

This intervention comes after peak body Domestic Violence NSW wrote to the Minister on 1 June seeking an urgent extension of funding to continue the employment of these important specialist workers, previously funded as a pilot under the National Partnership Agreement. The pilot has been hugely successful in supporting children and young people that have experienced domestic violence, and the funding extension will allow a formal pilot evaluation to occur.

Domestic Violence NSW have welcomed this funding and outlined the clear need for and impacts of these workers in a statement today.

Greens MP Abigail Boyd has said:

“For far too long the fate of women and children fleeing domestic violence was in the hands of a Coalition government who refused to provide vital services like this one with secure long-term funding. The continuation of funding for these crucial workers is a heartening sign that the new Labor Government will finally take the epidemic of gendered violence seriously.

“These specialist workers are so important because they support child victims of domestic violence as clients in their own right. These 20 workers losing their jobs would have meant thousands of young people not getting the support they need and deserve.”

TAX SUPERPROFITS TO PAY WORKERS MORE

NSW is missing out on tens of billions of dollars. By introducing a progressive coal royalty structure similar to the one in Queensland, we would have raised an extra $20 billion last year.

The NSW Government owns and controls, on behalf of the people of this state, the rights to the minerals and materials that naturally occur in NSW land.

Huge fossil fuel companies are only able to extract and sell these commodities with the consent of the State. It’s time they paid a fair price for that privilege.

The fossil fuel industry has made hundreds of billions of dollars out of their cosy relationship with governments. Granted permission to extract and sell coal, these large multinational fossil fuel corporations pay just over 7% in royalties back to the people of NSW – keeping the rest as mega-profits for themselves. These companies have a track record of taking more than their fair share and leaving communities suffering and stranded with poisoned groundwater, devastated landscapes and a stranded workforce when it suits their business models.

Globally, the hyper-inflation of fossil fuel prices driven by price-gouging opportunism and war profiteering from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has delivered record windfall profits to these already obscenely wealthy corporations. In the last year, NSW coal exports totaled over $70 billion dollars, but the people of NSW will only see about 7 cents in every dollar, or about $6 billion dollars of that amount.

Rather than going toward schools, hospitals and public infrastructure, billions of dollars went into the pockets of multinational mining corporations. The Greens believe there should be more money for schools and hospitals and less for mining billionaires.

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NSW Parliament intervenes before 20 Specialist Child Workers in domestic violence refugees lose their job

TAX SUPERPROFITS TO PAY WORKERS MORE

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