This week’s federal budget has been slammed for failing women, children and victims of domestic violence.

“The 2016 budget is further confirmation that the Federal Government is more concerned with threats abroad and public violence than the scourge of family violence permeating every corner of the Australian community,” according to Kate Fitz-Gibbon, Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Monash University.

The budget papers include a pledge of $100 million over three years for domestic and family violence responded.

The money will be funnelled into delivering the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children 2010-2022, and implementing recommendations from the April 2016 COAG advisory panel report.

There is also $5.1 million allocated to meting commitments made as part of the National Framework for Protecting Australia’s Children 2009-2020.

It will fund Building Capacity in Australian Parents – a trial program that seeks to build parenting skills in vulnerable families, such as those in which a parent has a mental illness, is imprisoned, or faces some other disadvantage.

But these schemes pale in comparison to the efforts of just one state, with Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews recently announcing a $500 million spend on tackling family violence.

“In comparison to the $100 million allocated to family violence, the budget allocates $30 billion in funding for national security, with the promise of ‘keeping Australians safe’,” Dr Fitz-Gibbon says.

“While national security threats should undoubtedly feature as a Commonwealth commitment, the significant disparity in funding is alarming.”

She says the huge spend on ‘security’ with no mention of security in the home ignores the reality of where Australian need protection most.

The expert in criminology said it ignores the previously declared “national emergency” that sees one woman killed on average in Australia each week.

“It does little to deliver on the pleas made by the sector for investment in specialist domestic and family violence services, community legal centres and primary prevention initiatives. These critical services will continue to be inadequately funded and resourced,” she added.

The Women’s Electoral Lobby (WEL) has slammed the lack of funding a women and children’s safety program, or for frontline crisis services.

“A good start would have been $1 billion over 5 years from the Commonwealth for a long term and securely funded Commonwealth/State national program for 24-hour accessible women’s refuges, frontline outreach services and transitional accommodation,” says WEL Australia Deputy Chair Helen L’Orange.

“Women’s refuges save lives.

“Australia needs a properly funded women and children’s safety program. Domestic and family violence services are grossly under-resourced in Australia.

“We are back to the seventies with community groups setting up women’s refuges without government funding.

“Daniel Andrews, Premier of Victoria, has shown the way by announcing a half billion dollar program within days of the tabling of the Report of the Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence.

“The Prime Minister has recently received a similarly comprehensive report from the COAG Advisory Panel on Reducing Violence Against Women.

“If the PM is passionate in his support for the elimination of violence against women, he should act now.”