Anthony Albanese has announced $925m to help victims of violence leave abusive relationships and a ban on deepfake pornography as new measures to combat violence against women.
After a national cabinet meeting on Wednesday, the prime minister announced the “leaving violence payment” of $5,000 to help meet the costs of leaving a relationship along with services, risk assessments and safety planning.
The commonwealth said it would deliver a range of new measures to tackle factors that exacerbate violence against women – such as violent online pornography and misogynistic content targeting children and young people.
The measures include: legislation to ban deepfake pornography; $6.5m of additional funding for the eSafety commissioner to pilot age verification to protect children from pornography and other age-restricted online services;; and introducing anti-doxing legislation in early August.
“Digitally created and altered sexually explicit material is a damaging form of abuse against women and girls that can inflict deep harm on victims,” the federal government said.
Albanese said “serious criminal penalties” would apply to creating and sharing sexually explicit material without consent, using technology including artificial intelligence.
The federal government will run a new phase of the Stop it at the Start campaign from mid-June until May 2025.
At the meeting, state and federal ministers agreed that justice system responses needed to be strengthened, with a focus on high-risk perpetrators and serial offenders, to prevent homicides.
Attorneys general and police ministers plan to develop options for improving police responses, including sharpening deterrence and improving fixated threat strategies.
Jurisdictions agreed to improve information sharing about perpetrators, and risk assessment and responses to sexual assault – work to be led by Victoria and South Australia.
Albanese said on Wednesday the suite of measures was “a further step forward” but said he could not be satisfied when a woman died in Australia, on average, every four days.
“I will be satisfied when we eliminate this as an issue, when we’re not talking about this an issue, where women are not feeling as though they have to mobilise in rallies.
“I will be satisfied when a parent says the same thing to their daughter that they say to their son when they go out at night, not, ‘How are you getting home from the train station? How are you getting home from the bus stop? Stay safe.’”
Asked if justice reforms could include changes to bail laws and electronic monitoring, Albanese said premiers and chief ministers had agreed to implement “best practice” which would be reflected in each jurisdiction’s legislation.
The leaving violence program will be available from mid 2025, providing eligible victim survivors up to $1,500 in cash and up to $3,500 in goods and services for up to 12 weeks.
“This acknowledges financial insecurity is closely linked to violence and can prevent women leaving a violent relationship,” the national cabinet statement said.
The leaving violence payment makes permanent a program trialled by 45,000 participants since 2021, which was due to end in January but will be extended as an interim measure while the government looks for a new service provider to deliver the new program.
In January Guardian Australia revealed more than half of people trying to access the escaping violence program were knocked back due to difficulties in establishing eligibility, but the government insists the new version will be redesigned.
However, applicants are still required to have experienced a change in living arrangement as a result of the intimate partner violence in the past 12 weeks and to be under financial stress to be eligible.
The Greens and the chief executive of Domestic Violence NSW (DVNSW), Delia Donovan, complained about the lack of investment in frontline services.
“I am frustrated at today’s announcement that does very little to address the current emergency,” Donovan said. “Services are unable to meet demand, resources are over-stretched, and women are being murdered.”
Donovan said the earlier escaping violence program had been poorly delivered, with delays accessing payments. A report into the program by DVNSW in 2022 found that only 15% of victim-survivors who accessed the program had received the full $5,000.
The UnitingCare Consortium praised extension of the payment, which its national director, Claerwen Little, said helped reach “a unique group of victim-survivors”, some 80% of who are self-referred, meaning they are “seeking access to support in a way that is not met in the current service landscape”.
Before the meeting Labor had come under pressure from the Coalition to introduce age verification for pornography.
The age verification pilot will examine age assurance products – testing their efficacy including privacy and security issues. The outcomes of the age verification pilot would inform the development of industry codes or standards to reduce children’s exposure to age-inappropriate material.
The federal communications minister, Michelle Rowland, said there was a role for social media platforms. She hinted that legislation could require them to enforce existing bans on children under 13.
“Part of this is putting the emphasis on the platforms to enforce their existing terms of service and, where they are not doing that, to examine what are the measures governments can take,” she said.
