Senate inquiry push for children with disabilities

From the Canberra Times

Labor leader Bill Shorten will seek a senate inquiry into the education of kids with disabilities, with the probe to examine how to better support students in schools.

Mr Shorten will announce the push on Monday, a month after first calling for it, and after it emerged in April that an autistic child in the Canberra school system had been held in a caged structure.( Refer previous posts) 

The inquiry will examine, among other things, the social, economic and personal benefits of improving education for students with a disability; the impact on students from reduced funding to schools from 2018 and the impact of cutting $100 million from the "support for students with a disability" program. 

The federal opposition also argues the government has not met commitments on data collection to help develop a needs-based funding model, which in turn delayed the introduction of that model.

Domestic Violence Index

The Victorian Government has launched a world-first family violence index to better understand the scale of the crisis.Family violence is the leading cause of death or disability in women under the age of 45 in Australia.Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence, Fiona Richardson, said one woman a week was killed by her partner last year.This year, it is tracking as two every week."We know we have a crisis on our hands, but what we don't know is the full extent of the harm caused by family violence," the Minister said."So take the crime statistics for example: they've been a good indicator over time."But we know that family violence is a massively under-reported crime.