Ms Karen Kiernan:

I will speak briefly and then Ms Kelly will take over, if that is okay. I wish to address the Deputy's question on family supports and domestic violence. It is not an exaggeration to say there is a crisis for children and their parents in the context of domestic abuse and child abuse and the impact on them. We are learning things now that will haunt us in decades to come in terms of the impact on children. What is there is incredibly insufficient. I refer to the very comprehensive paper on child poverty produced by the council on Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures. There are 11 different areas of concern, one of which is on family support. There is a reason for that, as Ms Jonsson explained earlier. Social welfare rates here may seem high compared with those in other countries but our universal services are very low, so people here have to pay privately for so many things. Prevention, early intervention and family support services, particularly for families experiencing domestic abuse, are critical. We work with one-parent families but people are sharing parenting post-domestic violence and in many cases the domestic abuse continues through into contact visits and sharing. In some cases, ongoing abuse and damage is being done to children and their parents. This may be a family law reform issue, and we can discuss that another day, but it is linked to poverty as well. I will hand over to Ms Kelly.