Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Childcare and Early Childhood Learning) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this ministerial statement on the 57th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Across this country and across the world, women and girls are the victims of violence every day. Certainly the media has highlighted a number of recent truly evil events, such as the attempted murder of Malala Yousufzai, the young Afghan girl who was shot in the head on the way home from school for the crime of criticising the Taliban's strict rules against education.

No-one could remain unmoved by the documentary that was made featuring Malala before she was shot. I remember the look on her face when she came back into her bedroom, after an event where she was excluded from school, and looked at her school bag and said, 'Thank goodness, all of my school books are still here!' And how can we not forget the recent rapes in India, those atrocious scandals. However, too often, many of the victims of violence have no voice. They may cry out, but too often their stories go unreported and they are forced to suffer in silence.

The latest government statistics outlined in the National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children 2010-2022 indicate that around one in three Australian victims has experienced physical violence and almost one in five has experienced sexual violence since the age of 15. Recognising that most violence perpetrated against women occurs in the home, the former Howard government campaigned vigorously to reduce domestic violence. We introduced the Partnerships against Domestic Violence and a host of women's safety agenda programs specifically aimed to help stem this abuse.

We have to recognise also that this abuse leaves not only physical scars but also emotional ones. It is devastating to hear constituents reliving the traumas they have endured, and it does reiterate just how vulnerable and alone some people feel in the face of violence. I have heard stories of women who are beaten for spending the family budget on food or new shoes for the children, instead of buying a carton of beer or cigarettes with a partner, or who may not have the dinner on the table at exactly 6:30 pm and are caught on the telephone to a friend.

In my own electorate of Farrer, in Broken Hill alone I have the Family Violence Prevention, Legal Service and Women's Domestic Violence Advocacy Service and Lifeline, Centacare and other not-for-profit services. In a town that has approximately 19,000 residents, this gives a small indication of the vast need. This is not a speech in which one would choose to be political, but, unfortunately, the Attorney-General's Department has recently seen fit not to fund this critical domestic violence advocacy service and allocate what I assume are surplus funds to other services around the country. Nobody looking at the demographic in Broken Hill, including the large Indigenous demographic, could possibly consider that other services were more worthwhile—equally worthwhile maybe, but not more worthwhile.

So many cases of domestic violence go unreported. We know that sexual violence is one of the most underreported forms of violence against women. For many women, there is a very real element of fear or possible repercussions, or just sheer embarrassment—the very thought of reporting the abuse to local police is too great a trauma for some women to endure. In rural Australia and in small towns the telephone counselling that is available for women in this position is absolutely vital—because at the services, if they are there, it is just not possible to show your face.

I think it is important that I make the following point. It is all well and good for us to send delegations off to New York to lobby the commission's delegates and share their views, but this is little more than window dressing. The only thing that really counts is what we do in practice and how we as decision makers and authors of policy really make a change in these women's lives. We have to acknowledge the problems in our own backyard. We have to allocate the large sums of money that I know go towards international meetings such as the UN meetings that the minister has talked about. I do not criticise either the meeting or the minister's attendance at it, but we are talking about $320 million allocated to a region. I do recognise the importance of the Pacific, and I commend the government for that, but I also realise that there is a great shortage of real dollars on the ground making a difference in the lives of the poor and the dispossessed, and the people in our own country, particularly our Indigenous women, for whom there is just nowhere to turn.

The government, I believe, have dropped the ball. They are yet to establish the promised centre for excellence for data collection for domestic violence, despite this being a core promise. The Be Safe pilot commenced by the coalition in 2007 was not re-funded by those opposite. This program helped to provide protection for women who have a restraining order against a violent partner by provision of a personal alarm they could activate when threatened. This pilot program empowered the women involved, enabling them to once again feel safe in the communities in which they live, avoiding the need for many women to hide out in crisis accommodation, which throws their own lives and those of their children into sheer disarray.

The Howard government's strong commitment to policies aimed at reducing violence against women will be carried forward by any future coalition government. Government does have a vital role to play in fostering a society that has a culture of respect and harmony. A framework of stringent deterrence helps enforce the understanding of what is and is not acceptable behaviour. We have to ensure that our courts administer the appropriate penalties, ensuring that protection orders, apprehended violence orders, family violence orders and the other state-imposed orders are enforced and that those covered by these orders are given every support to reclaim their lives. This is what government has to do. As we all know, actions speak far louder than words—far louder than UN conferences and the non-binding resolutions, however grand and exciting they may seem. So I call on this government to fight the good fight against violence against women. I commend them for what they have done. I do say that we can also do more on violence against men, girls and boys. We must not condone violence, in whatever form we find it, irrespective of who the victim is.

Question agreed to.

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