Will the state government step up and fix regional Victoria's violence crisis?

HOW MANY MORE aimed to expose and stop violence against women in the regions, where the problem is most severe but support is most lacking. ACM is pushing for more funding for preventative and protective programs, now.

The Victorian government has resisted calls to invest in specific regional family and gender violence prevention measures, despite deaths and assaults occurring at a much higher rate outside Melbourne.

Premier Jacinta Allan said Victoria was already leading the nation for family violence prevention.

"We had a Royal Commission, and we've invested billions of dollars - more than any other state or territory ever," Ms Allan said.

"But clearly, we need to do more - too many women and children are being killed by men."

Ms Allan - who represents the regional district of Bendigo East - did not address discrepancy in country areas, where deaths are tracking at triple the rate of Melbourne in 2024.

She said she was still waiting for a report from the task force she established to plan the government's next steps responding to the crisis.

"I've asked the Attorney-General, the Minister for Women and the Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence to come back to Cabinet with a plan to build on the substantial work that we've already done here in Victoria," Ms Allan said.

Based on extensive interviews with family violence service workers and victim survivors, ACM sent three modest requests to the Premier that could make a meaningful difference in regional Victoria:

In a response, the government said it already had a Preventing Violence Through Sports Grants program that supported 12 projects across the state, with half of them involving some regional clubs.

It said $72.1 million over two years was allocated in the 2024-25 budget for immediate support and emergency accommodation for survivors of family violence, and it had invested more than $250 million since the 2016 Royal Commission to improve and expand refuge and crisis accommodation, including in regional locations.

But in both cases there was no mention of a specific regional approach recognising the higher rates of violence in the country.

Neither the Premier nor her spokesperson addressed the unfair government funding model leaving regional family violence services shortchanged.

Through the How Many More campaign, ACM has exposed the shocking scale of family violence in regional Victoria.

It showed regional local government areas (LGAs) occupying the top 26 spots for serious family violence assaults in 2023, with the worst areas spread across different corners of the state.

It found incidents involving family physical and sexual violence were also two or three times higher in country areas, with regional LGAs taking the top 17 places on the state list, and 28 of the top 30.

It also calculated women were being killed by alleged male violence at triple the rate of Melbourne over the first four months of 2024.

Experts in the specialist family violence services said family violence was "magnified" in the regions because there were fewer support services, fewer police, greater isolation and social conservatism and not enough housing.

For women who make the difficult and dangerous decision to leave a violent home, having accommodation available is potentially a life and death matter.

But CEO of Ballarat family violence service WRISC, Libby Jewson, said this was a massive problem outside Melbourne.

"In Ballarat the housing situation is just so desperate," Ms Jewson said.

"We have a housing checklist and none of our hotels or motels fit the criteria for safe housing for women fleeing family violence.

"There's not one in Ballarat [a city of 120,000 people]."

Chelsea Tobin - CEO of 24/7 family violence response service Safe Steps - said the lack of supported accommodation was the real problem.

"In the supported accommodation we can build up therapeutic supports around the client, which is impossible in a hotel or motel," she said.

"That's why 96 per cent of exits from supported accommodation are safe, compared with less than 50 per cent from a hotel."

Victoria spends more on family violence prevention than all the other states and territories combined.

The state government has spent the eight years since its Royal Commission into Family Violence implementing 227 recommendations from the inquiry.

Yet rates of violence and deaths are broadly similar in Victoria compared with NSW and other states.

Tania Farha is CEO of Safe and Equal, which represents dozens of family violence services across the state. She said Victoria was still at the start of the journey to stamp out violence.

"We are eight years into the reform process, but really it's just the start because we've been building all the components," Ms Farha said.

"The Royal Commission opened a lot of doors for people to be able to get help. It's created a lot of demand and we have to find a way to make the response to that demand sustainable.

"That means the police doing their job, the courts applying the laws in the right ways, services providing support to people when they need it and how they need it."

But most of all, she said services needed better, longer-term funding.

"We've seen a lot of short-term funding to services, so funding is continually lapsing. It's very hard to do workforce planning with short-term money,' Ms Farha said.

She said she hoped the government would listen to the services on the ground for solutions.

"When the Commonwealth Games were cancelled and the government announced a $1 billion housing fund we made a submission urging them to family violence, to create a continuum from crisis to transitional to permanent housing," she said.

That request didn't materialise, but she hoped the new task force would look at new tactics.

"I haven't heard any clear initiatives yet, and we certainly haven't been consulted on them yet."

The federal government has trumpeted new commitments to fight the epidemic of violence.

As regional Australians decry shortfalls of social and crisis housing across the country,

Federal Housing Minister Julie Collins pointed to a range of existing measures she said would guarantee "more Australians have a safe and affordable place to call home".

Among them was a pre-budget commitment of $1 billion targeted at crisis and transitional accommodation for women and children fleeing domestic violence, and housing for youth.

Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth has said that "a number of our investments are about specifically targeting the regions," referencing 500 frontline domestic and family violence workers in the October 2022 budget.

"One of the conditions was that around half those workers, actually went to rural, regional and remote areas, recognising the extra need that they do have," she said. But the move has faced scrutiny, after it was revealed only a fraction of the promised staff had been hired as of May.

Ms Rishworth has been promoting the expansion of a national program to provide financial support worth $5000 to victim-survivors from mid-2025. It is expected to reach roughly 36,700 people each year.

But the ministers have not indicated any new announcements for regional Australians in the pipeline.

Nationals spokesperson on the prevention of domestic violence, Pat Conaghan said a "broken" system has left regional Australians behind.

"We forgot to concentrate [on] prevention and intervention, and until we actually address the root cause, which is men's behavioural problems, then this isn't going to go away," Mr Conaghan said.

Victoria's opposition spokesperson on family violence, Cindy McLeish, said while the state had made major investments in the sector, too many were being left behind in the regions.

"If you speak to anyone working in the prevention space they will tell you how underfunded it is," Ms McLeish said.

She said the government's Melbourne-centric focus was a factor behind the challenge regional areas faced with family violence.

"Melbourne and the larger population centres are always thought about first," Ms McLeish said.

"Meanwhile in my electorate of Eildon there isn't a single 24 hour police station, so that makes it really difficult for women, combined with the lack of services, refuges and motels."

The government has been replacing 17 communal refuges across the state with the "core and cluster" model which allows victim-survivors to live independently while getting wraparound support services.

But Ms McLeish said the process was way behind schedule.

"They've changed the way they report on these projects so it is hard to tell how far behind they are, but we just can't afford to be behind on things like this," she said.

"We take three steps forward and two steps back. There's been a lot of effort, but people still aren't being supported enough."

The government emphasised there were a range of specialist services available to women in regional Victoria, including 21 out of the state's 36 Orange Door locations. These are in:

Bacchus Marsh, Bairnsdale, Ballarat, Bendigo, Colac, Drysdale, Echuca, Geelong, Horsham, Leongatha, Maryborough, Mildura, Morwell, Sale, Shepparton, Swan Hill, Wallan, Wangaratta, Warragul, Warrnambool and Wodonga.

A spokesperson said the Premier's task force was expected to report back imminently with recommended next steps to address the crisis.

"There will be more to come, so watch this space," they said.

ACM hopes any future initiatives will include a targeted response to address the significantly deeper problems in regional Victoria.