Women's Refuge is labelling the Government's new $320 million package as the first real investment in reducing family violence.
The package announced on Sunday is aimed at:
- "preventing family violence and sexual violence ($47.8 million over four years)"
- "safe, consistent and effective responses to family violence in every community ($84.3 million)"
- "expanding essential specialist sexual violence services: moving towards fully funding services ($131.1 million)"
- "reforming the criminal justice system to better respond to victims of sexual violence ($37.8 million)"
- And "strengthening system leadership and supporting new ways of working ($20.0 million)".
Dr Ang Jury, the CEO of Women's Refuge, says the Government has finally realised that the problem actually costs money to address.
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"This is the first proper investment that we've ever seen into this problem in New Zealand," Dr Jury told The AM Show.
Dr Jury is particularly focused on prevention and education as the key to stopping domestic violence.
"Education, that's doing work with small children, that's trying to create something that will stop it going forward.
"We recognise trauma affects young people, like children... really, really badly and upsets the wiring in their brains and does all sorts of bad things to them."
However, she believes any reduction in abuse comes down to one simple solution.
"The thing that stops domestic violence is people need to stop hitting each other and abusing each other and controlling each other."
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