Comment: Terror at home campaign pays off
NEARLY four months ago the Daily News launched a Terror At Home campaign.
And yesterday the good news came in when the Queensland Government announced a landmark $31 million funding package to address the state's enormous domestic violence problem.
The campaign, run jointly with other daily papers in the Australian Regional Media (ARM) stable, lobbied for the introduction of specialist domestic violence courts.
It also lobbied for mandatory respectful relationship education programs in all schools.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Communities Minister Shannon Fentiman yesterday said the funding package would cover a trial of a domestic violence court on the Gold Coast, as well as other measures including the establishment of an independent Domestic and Family Violence Death Review Unit, expanding the domestic violence duty lawyer service at Legal Aid Queensland, and two more crisis shelters in the state.
ARM editorial director Bryce Johns said it was encouraging the State Government had seen merit in the media campaign.
"The court trial is a step towards fixing the system, but until we do something about prevention in schools - which was the other major aim of our campaign - our chances of really decreasing the number of family violence cases may be limited," Mr Johns said.
