DVCS CEO Sue Webeck raised concerns about government consultation with frontline agencies when it came to domestic, family and sexual violence prevention policies. Photo: Hilary Wardhaugh.
The council designed to advise the ACT Government on how to best respond to domestic, family and sexual violence in Canberra hasn’t operated since late 2024.
The Domestic Violence Prevention Council (DVPC) was paused during the caretaker period, but Domestic Violence Crisis Service CEO Sue Webeck told a committee inquiry that nothing had happened since.
“[It] was put into hiatus as per caretaker conventions; however, following the [2024] election, it was further communicated that it would be held in hiatus while new governance mechanisms were considered,” she said.
“Nothing has eventuated out of that at this time, and there are a couple of the governance mechanisms that engage government agencies, as well as non-government agencies, who are currently not meeting.”
The DVPC has previously provided advice to government on how police, frontline services and legal services can engage with the community around coercive control, and is an avenue for those who don’t sit in government agencies to provide strategic advice regarding responses to domestic, family and sexual violence in the community.
It helps shape policy and identify gaps.
The ACT Government has engaged external consultants in response to a scathing Auditor-General report, which found it had neither a strategy to spend the Safer Families Levy nor a way to evaluate its effectiveness.
This includes developing an ACT Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Strategy.
Ms Webeck said agencies had a “long and proud history” of working collaboratively, but now found it harder to know exactly which services were being consulted and if the right agencies were being asked to have their say.
“I would say that over the last number of years … there has been a rapid expansion of government agency policy positions and policy objectives that are operating, at times, without frontline service delivery knowledge or connection,” she said.
“We know that, particularly, a number of procurement decisions around bringing in consultants have occurred without any consultation with the sector.”
Ms Webeck said bringing in such consultants sometimes resulted in frontline service providers sitting through hours of advice, with staff unaware that they’d be needed.
The case has been put to the government that there needs to be some type of sector governance mechanism that allows agencies to provide advice directly to the government, the public service and ministers.
Ms Webeck said it didn’t have to be the DVPC moving forward, but there needed to be something.
“The very live question is there must be a governance mechanism that enables those who are doing the work on the ground and have decades of expertise to participate in the strategic direction and policy reform work across the ACT,” she said.
“Otherwise, we will have government agencies overseeing the implementation of a strategy that, in many ways, is likely to form part of their work plan. And so that does require insight and input from non-government agencies.”
YWCA Canberra CEO Frances Crimmins added such a body would provide the transparency also called for in the Auditor-General’s report, particularly around how the Safer Families Levy money was being spent.
“There hasn’t been transparency on how the funds have been allocated, and if they have been allocated to government initiatives … we never saw transparency on the evaluation report,” she said.
“It’s about to go to $70 per year, how that funding is being used … it’s accountability both ways, that’s [currently] hard to get your head around.”
Prevention of Family and Domestic Violence Minister Dr Marisa Paterson acknowledged at the committee hearing that the DVPC had been paused. She said she’d told stakeholders in May that the government would “seek to find a governance structure” that was more representative of the strategy that was being developed.
“I don’t want to start something up now that then will potentially need to change in six, eight months,” she said.
“But I hear the calls for a group like that to be established again.”
The 2025-26 ACT Budget contained $137 million for domestic, family and sexual violence programs over the next four years. The levy will contribute $18.7 million towards initiatives.
