Greens MP and Status of Women Spokesperson, Mehreen Faruqi has called on the Minister for Family and Community Services, Gabrielle Upton, to heed the call from the NSW Upper House to restore funding to the Muslim Women’s Support Centre. Last week, Dr Faruqi’s motion passed unanimously. To see details, go to (www.mehreenfaruqi.org.au/motion-muslim-womens-support-centre/).
Dr Faruqi said:
“The NSW Upper House has unanimously passed my motion calling on Minister Upton to maintain the current level of funding the Muslim Women’s Association receives from New South Wales Government to successfully run their support centre in Bass Hill as an independent, high quality and culturally appropriate service for women and children fleeing domestic and family violence.
“The centre is in a state of limbo, having lost funding during the Government’s botched Going Home Staying Home program, which saw specialist providers of women’s only services forced out by the Government.
“The Minister needs to heed the call from the Upper House and restore funding to the centre so they can continue doing what they have been doing for decades – providing excellent, professional and tailored long term assistance and crisis accommodation for the complex needs of many women from a huge variety of culturally diverse backgrounds.
“Rather than making specialist and feminist women’s only services jump administrative hoops, the Government should learn a lesson from this bungled and chaotic process, go back to the drawing board and reallocate funding to women’s only refuges who have lost their funding,” she said.
Published in The Indian Sun, Sydney
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