Women and children escaping tumultuous homes in a part of Australia with the highest rate of domestic violence may not get the help they need following this month's ruling to raise the minimum wage by at least $40 a week.
The Fair Work Commission decision sets the pay of at least 2.7 million Australians to keep pace with recent inflation spikes, but in the DV sector it means already tight budgets will be further stretched.
Susan Crane, the chief executive of Dawn House, a women's shelter in Darwin, said that while her organisation was sighing with relief having already increased wages to above the award rate, she was worried the rise could deepen the DV crisis further.
"We work really hard in this sector, and we deserve a wage increase, but the real difficulty is that we are on five-year funding agreements and it's a flat line," she said.
"We get exactly the same [amount] of money every single year. And it means that if there's a wage increase, or there's inflation, or higher cost of living, we have to absorb that within a budget that doesn't grow from one year to the next."
She said essential services like crisis accommodation, counselling, and food relief for women and children fleeing violence were in jeopardy.
The changes come into effect on July 1 and will lift the minimum wage by $1.05 an hour, but in the DV sector, where employees are on award rates, pays will go up 4.6 per cent but result in a cut in real wages when taking inflation into account.
More than 1,000 kilometres south, Larissa Ellis, chief executive of the Women's Safety Service of Central Australia (WoSSCA), said there had been a soaring increase in demand for crisis accommodation.
But after looking at the books, Ms Ellis had become resigned to the fact that planned measures to address the crisis would have to be scrapped.
She estimated the wage increase would cost an extra $150,000 to $200,000 a year.
"In the Northern Territory, we have the highest rates of DV across Australia, we haven't seen an abatement at all. And with COVID-19 we've actually seen an increase, and an increased demand on our services," Ms Ellis said.
Ms Ellis said that of particular concern was that children — which made up almost 50 per cent of the people accessing the service — would not have access to a specialised therapeutic service.
"That was one of the things that we were looking at trying to implement for next financial year," she said.
Current funding agreements for Dawn House, WoSSCA, and many other DV services in the Northern Territory end in about 12 months.
"We're a team. We work closely together with the domestic violence sector and support each other," Ms Crane said.
"And I think we're going to have to go to government, as a sector and say, right across the board, that there needs to be an increase in the amount of funding that we get year in year out."
The Northern Territory's peak body for the social and community sector is also calling on the government to shore up funding.
NTCOSS senior policy officer Tess Snowdon said that while the Fair Work Commission ruling was a great outcome amid a deepening cost-of-living crisis, the ruling would have "significant" impacts for the community sector, the largest employer in the NT.
"We know that domestic, family or sexual violence services are already stretched," she said.
"We have the highest rates of DFSV [domestic, family, and sexual violence] in the nation here and that is growing.
Kate Worden is the Minister for the Prevention of Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence.
She said reducing domestic, family and sexual violence in the Northern Territory had never been a bigger priority for the government.
She said the government had allocated $54 million to reducing rates of DV in the 2022 Budget and had created the Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Inter-agency Coordination and Reform Office, aimed at facilitating cross-agency coordination.
"Key duties for the office will be to map existing governance and investment efforts, develop a consistent approach to monitoring and evaluating programs, and develop a whole-of-government budget submission for 2022–23," Ms Worden said.
Ms Worden did not respond to questions from the ABC over whether the government would commit to increasing funding for DV services in the NT.
