THE HON TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
ABC NEWS BREAKFAST
TUESDAY, 25 NOVEMBER 2025

TOPICS: 1800RESPECT FUNDING BOOST, PAULINE HANSON.

BRIDGET BRENNAN: There's a lot on the government's agenda before the Christmas break. And for more, we're joined by Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek. Good to talk to you, Minister, thanks for joining us again on News Breakfast. I want to ask you about the figures we're seeing for 1800RESPECT, which of course is the national crisis line for family, domestic and sexual violence, implemented a few years ago. There are so many more calls now coming through to this hotline, Minister. Do you think this represents Australians becoming more aware of the hotline, or is it in fact that we're seeing more victim survivors across the country?

MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES, TANYA PLIBERSEK: I think it's a little bit of both. We set up 1800RESPECT in 2010 and it received 11,000 calls that year. In the last financial year, it received 342,000 contacts. So, it's not just calls now, it's video chats and SMS as well, and online counselling. And, of course, the need has grown really exponentially. I think it is because people know that the service is there. I think it's because some types of violence have increased and it's also because people are better at identifying that what's happening to them is concerning. So if you take the example of coercive control, this is something that we weren't even talking about five or 10 years ago in mainstream conversations. But a lot of people are much more aware that they're uncomfortable with what's happening in their relationship now. So, I think all three of those things are a factor. And today we're announcing a 40% funding increase to make sure that we can keep up with that demand. We know that most calls are answered within 20 seconds. Well over 90% of calls are answered within 20 seconds. That's a great achievement. But as those numbers grow, we need to keep up with demand and that's why we're increasing the funding.

BRENNAN: Will some of that funding go to high-risk communities, marginalised communities that might want to use a service but might not have been comfortable doing so? I remember being in remote Aboriginal communities some years ago, for example, and hearing from women, ‘oh we don't actually have much phone service here’, or ‘we might speak English as a second or third language’. How is the service engaging with different communities?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, it is important that it engages with different communities. And we've also got the Yarn phone counselling service. We've got MensLine, we've got other phone counselling services that are designed specifically for other communities. But the other thing we need to do, Bridget, of course, is put services on the ground. And that's why we're not just increasing funding for 1800RESPECT. Our government has invested more than $4 billion in 122 measures under the National Plan on Violence Against Women and Children. And that one of the things we've done in addition to the National Plan, is massively expand funding for legal services, including $800 million extra for family violence prevention legal services to make sure that there are actually lawyers on the ground who can go out and talk to women, including in those more isolated communities, to be a resource for them, to help them. We've made the Leaving Violence Payment permanent as well, which means up to $5,000 of support to leave a violent relationship. We've got $1.2 billion invested in emergency and transitional housing. 10 days paid domestic and family violence leave. We're working more intensively with men and adolescent boys. We've got specific funding for children who've been victims of domestic violence or growing up in households where there's violence that's traumatised them. We're working right across the board. And today, as we're thinking about gender-based violence, I think it's really important to give a shout out to the people who are working on the front line every day as well. We know that there are people who've been working for decades to reduce rates of violence, including in those remote communities that you were talking about, often the grandmothers and the aunties who are there day in, day out supporting their community to change.

BRENNAN: Yeah, phenomenal people. You meet them every day, often on very little pay or just doing it on their own, on their own back. Now, the Centre for Women's Economic Safety says four in five women don't know where to get support for economic abuse. That's a bit of a red flag, isn’t it?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: It certainly is. And I was listing off those measures before. Another thing we've done, obviously, is we're changing social security law so that can't be weaponised against victims of domestic violence by perpetrators. We're going right across our government systems to make sure that they can't be weaponised against victims of domestic and family violence. But this is a big area of concern. We've seen, for example, in the past perpetrators using banking systems transferring one cent at a time so that they can send an abusive or threatening message to their ex-partner. We've had to work with banks, for example, to change, to make sure that bank systems aren't being used to continue to abuse and frighten victims of domestic violence. This is something that we need to work right across our community, other levels of government and the private sector to do better, to keep people safe. There are some areas where we've seen improvements. There's been a slight improvement in intimate partner violence over the years, but we see other areas of concern that are growing. So, for example, violence in relationships where the parties are under the age of 18. We've seen a big, big increase in violence in young relationships. So, we need to get on top of those changes as well. We need to make sure that we are staying up to date with the way that perpetrators are using new and, you know, ever increasing frightening ways of victimising their partners or ex-partners. We need to keep up with that and we need to keep investing. I mean, another example, we've had to ban nudify Apps. These are apps that take a legitimate photo of a person and, you know, make it look like really genuine pornography and then those images are spread to blackmail or bully or humiliate a partner or ex-partner. I mean, it is incredible that just as we begin to tackle one type of violence, a new type of violence emerges. We've got to make sure that we keep up with all of those changes.

BRENNAN: On a separate issue. How do you think Muslim women across Australia would have received that stunt by Senator Pauline Hanson in the Senate yesterday as she turned up to Parliament in a burqa?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Well, you know, I don't remember the last time someone in a burqa robbed a bank. I think it's completely standard, you know, rehashed Pauline Hanson, headline grabbing behaviour. The only thing that you can be guaranteed of is that some girl in a headscarf on her way to school today is going to be bullied on the train. I think the other thing that's disappointing about this is we've had warnings from the ASIO director that the biggest, you know, fastest growing threat in Australia is from right-wing extremism. We saw a bunch of Nazis lined up outside New South Wales Parliament a couple of weeks ago. I don't see Pauline Hanson calling out that behaviour or that risk. She's once again going for a group of people who will be, you know, threatened, abused and perhaps even physically assaulted on their way to work or school today.

BRENNAN: Tanya Plibersek, thanks for joining us on the show today on this International Day of Elimination of Violence Against Women. It's a really important day.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Thank you.

ENDS