Mr. Speaker, due to a lack of funding, the Victoria Sexual Assault Centre has had to discontinue its hotline after decades of service. Year in, year out, the hotline has helped hundreds of women in Victoria. Across the country, rape crisis centres face the same urgent problem, and with the surge of victims coming forward after the #MeToo movement, the situation just gets worse.
If the Prime Minister is truly concerned with the well-being of women and sexual assault victims, why does the budget not provide stable, predictable, operating funding to rape crisis centres?