Funding cuts a 'devastating blow' to sexual support services

1:26 pm on 23 September 2025

Saturday Morning

Emma Andrews, Henare te Ua Māori Journalism Intern

Sexual assault generic. Photo: Supplied/123RF

Proposed funding cuts to sexual violence services will not guarantee support to survivors and could lengthen wait times, advocates say.

The redirection of $1.7 million announced in Budget 2025 will end sexual violence long-term recovery, support, and prevention programmes around the country Te Ohaaki A Hine - National Network Ending Sexual Violence Together (TOAH-NNEST) warns.

Wellington Rape Crisis general manager Kyla Rayner told Mihingarangi Forbes on RNZ's Saturday Morning the cuts would leave thousands of survivors without care.

"Once you take any money away, it has an impact on every other service program that we provide so it's created a huge sense of instability for our workforces, for our services, but most importantly for our communities and the people that are desperately seeking that help."

A $90.3m boost over four years was announced in the Wellbeing Budget in 2019 which had gone "some way" to help sexual abuse survivors, but Rayner said it was not enough to meet the demand.

"We're all impacted differently in terms of the financial cost, but we're impacted the same in terms of the fact that this is after decades of underfunding."

"And we never seem to catch up on in terms of revenue that we receive from our primary funder MSD (Ministry for Social Development)."

Rayner said there were 13 specialist organisations outside of Accident Compensation Corporation coverage who could face closure.

Already some people who require long-term recovery counselling are on a six- to 12-month waitlist due to the rising number of survivors.

"It's really hard to give survivors certainty about access to that thing that they are really, really desperate for.

"At Wellington Rape Crisis, at a local level… we've currently got 110 survivors on our waitlist for counselling, we get about 25-30 new referrals a month - that's new people accessing services - and that certainly tracks of the experiences of our member agencies across the country too."

New Zealand has rates of sexual violence against teenagers above the global average, ahead of even a badly afflicted Australia, according to a study published in The Lancet which looked at more than 200 countries over the last three decades.

Among people aged 12 to 18, was estimated almost 30 percent of New Zealand women and 20 percent of men experience sexual violence.

The BERL 2021 report estimated the annual economic cost of sexual violence at $6.9 billion in 2020. The costs included $600m in Crown costs, $5.2b to individuals and $1.1b to wider society.

Minister for Social Development Louise Upston said funding was not being reduced. Instead, it was contracts with MSD for long-term care and prevention that had been extended from their original expiry dates of June 2025 to December 2025.

"The government is undertaking a review to inform decisions about the best way to fund family violence and sexual violence support services as part of Te Aorerekura Action Plan," Upston said.

"The government is seeking to improve service delivery consistency and prioritise funding to better meet the needs of people impacted by family violence and sexual violence."

No final decisions had been made on reprioritisation of this funding until such time as the baseline review was complete.

Rayner said it was "absolutely a cut to our funding" and urged the government to withdraw the cuts.

"They are in complete contradiction to the government's own 25-year strategy, Te Aorerekura, and will deepen this $6.93b-a-year social crisis.

"It's very hard to understand where it could go, given this is being taken away from specialist crisis sexual violence services, that's a specialist workforce, a specialist service we provide. We can't imagine where that will be reprioritised to that would meet the needs of survivors who are looking for that crisis response."

If the funding was cut, Rayner said the affected services would rely on community support or have to let people go from their books.

"We will always persist to do our best to meet survivors and their families with really good responses, but we absolutely [want] government to partner with us and take responsibility to enable us to provide those responses."

Ngā Kaitiaki Mauri TOAH-NNEST Russell Smith said the cuts also threatens workforce development such as START and HELP, which were organisations that trained specialist sexual violence therapists.

"The removal of Te Puna Oranga funding is a devastating blow to whānau Māori, forcing them into mainstream services that cannot meet their cultural or trauma recovery needs.

"Without these training pathways to build much needed capacity in our workforce, New Zealand risks a national shortage of qualified sexual violence therapists."