Service system priorities Although not exhaustive or in any particular order, the Forum highlighted the following as key to improving prevention of and responses to violence: • Meaningful and culturally-safe legislative reform that acknowledges the complexities and impact of the criminal justice system on First Nations women and children—including coercive control laws, the underreporting of violence by women, the rates of child removal and criminalisation of victimsurvivors—and the need for harmonisation of family violence definitions and legislation across jurisdictions, and the importance of alternative pathways to justice. 40 First Nations women describe their interactions with the justice system as one that exacerbates the impacts of violence and compounds the trauma they experience. Fundamentally, the justice system should protect women and children, but instead it re-traumatises women, removes their children and too often criminalises them for the violence they have endured.41 Reforms are needed at all stages of contact, from police, courts, corrections, community corrections (parole and probation), both in relation to reporting violence but also to prevent First Nations women from becoming perpetrators due to a lack of protection. Indigenous women who are under protected or not protected at all by the system may cause harm to the person who is being violent towards them as their only means of escape.42 • Enabling women’s economic independence through education, employment, and economic development, and improving their financial security through guaranteeing social security payments above the poverty line, enhancing crisis-payments when escaping violence, removing welfare conditionalities, addressing the root causes of poverty and valuing and supporting unpaid care. Poverty and the lack of economic security for many First Nations people, particularly women, compounds the conditions for family violence, intensifies the impacts of harm and makes unresolved trauma extremely difficult to recover from. 43 This is further exacerbated for women who carry out most of the unpaid care work for families, children, people with disabilities and those experiencing trauma. Moreover, the inadequacy and punitive nature of Australia’s social security system deepens First Nations poverty and economic insecurity which makes it hard for victim-survivors to leave violent situations.44 • Urgent and immediate action to guarantee secure housing for women and their families, including crisis, transitional and long-term housing, and to end homelessness-related deaths. First Nations women describe overcrowding, housing insecurity and homelessness as major contributors to violence and exacerbators of the impacts of trauma, and further increasing punitive interventions from the legal and child protection system. There are long waiting lists for crisis, medium and long-term accommodation options in states and territories, as well as a lack of affordable and culturally appropriate public housing. The severe lack of all forms of secure housing leaves First Nations women and their children without a safe place to live and thrive, heightening their vulnerability to homelessness, which further increases the likelihood of violence. Wiyi Yani U Thangani • First Nations Women’s Safety Policy Forum • Outcomes Report | 35