Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the Ngunnawal peoples and the Ngambri peoples, traditional owners of the land on which we meet, and I pay my respects to elders past and present.

In speaking in relation to the Closing the gap report I observe, as other speakers have, that only two of the seven targets are on track to be met. It is a very disappointing result for this country, which has for a long time been seeking to close the gap that Indigenous peoples face. I also want to note and agree with the previous speakers in this debate that there should, in addition to the existing Closing the Gap targets, be a target in relation to the justice system. I observe the significantly higher rates of incarceration amongst Aboriginal men, and I also observe the significantly higher and increasing rates of incarceration amongst Aboriginal women, including in my home state of Queensland. Those are issues which our whole nation should seek to address and about which we should all be concerned.

In supporting the Closing the Gap targets and the view that there ought to be justice targets as well, it is important to acknowledge that reducing violence against women and children must underpin and be a part of any work that this country does to address Indigenous disadvantage. So significant is this issue that there has been a significant amount of work and thought put into how, in fact, we could reduce violence against women and children for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women.

Under the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children, one of the national outcomes relates to Indigenous communities. The national outcome is that Indigenous communities are strengthened. Of course, the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children is a 12-year plan that was initiated under the previous Labor government. It is presently in its second action plan, with a third action plan by the government no doubt underway. To give the parliament an idea of what that national plan requires in respect of Indigenous communities, I just want to read from the plan itself a couple of excerpts to give the flavour of what is required. As I said, the outcome is that Indigenous communities are strengthened, and that outcome:

… will be measured by reduction in the proportion of Indigenous women who consider that family violence, assault and sexual assault are problems for their communities and neighbourhoods; and increase in the proportion of Indigenous women who are able to have their say within their communities on important issues, including violence.

There are several strategies that underpin that national outcome. They are: 'to foster the leadership of Indigenous women within communities and broader Australian society, to build community capacity at the local level, and to improve access to appropriate services'. Those three strategies are very important means of addressing the issue of violence against women and their children, specifically for Indigenous women.

One of the wonderful things that has occurred under that national plan has been the establishment of Australia's National Research Organisation for Women's Safety to reduce violence against women and their children. It is a long name, but it is usually abbreviated to 'ANROWS'. ANROWS very recently—in January this year—published a paper called Existing knowledge, practice and responses to violence against women in Australian Indigenous communities: State of knowledge paper. Apart from raising some concerns about an absence of available evidence, the paper very helpfully canvassed the evidence as it stands at the moment. In so doing, it turns to the issue of the incidence of violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and their children. In respect of the latter, it notes that very little is actually known about the incidence of family violence in the Torres Strait, so most of the report focuses on mainland Aboriginal women and their children.

In seeking to canvass the rates of violence against Indigenous women, the report notes that there are significant issues of underreporting of violence with respect to Indigenous women. There are a few reasons for that. There is the fact that national surveys are often not designed to collect information specific to Indigenous women on family violence. There is also a lack of a consistent definition of family violence across jurisdictions, and that is an issue that permeates all of the work that is done to try to reduce and ultimately end family violence.

One of the issues that does contribute to the lack of clarity around the rates of violence for Indigenous women is underreporting. Some of the reasons for underreporting in Indigenous communities cited by the report include:

For all of those reasons there can be significant underreporting of family violence. On the reporting that we do have—it has been reported in the national plan to reduce violence against women and also in this recent paper to which I have referred—we know that Indigenous women are 35 times more likely to be hospitalised due to family violence related assaults than non-Indigenous women are. Probably an equally horrifying statistic is that hospital data from Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and Northern Territory showed that the rate of head injury due to assault was 21 times higher amongst Indigenous people compared to non-Indigenous people, and the head injury rate experienced by Indigenous women was 69 times higher than that experienced by non-Indigenous women.

Those statistics are bleak. Equally bleak is the statistic relating to mortality from violence. Despite representing just over three per cent of the total Australian population, Indigenous women accounted for 15 per cent of homicide victims in Australia when survey information was taken back in 2002-03. A 2006 report indicated that Indigenous women were nearly 11 per cent more likely to die due to assault than non-Indigenous women were.

So the incidence of violence against women and their children in Indigenous communities is significant and, in seeking to address that incidence, obviously it is important to talk about the causes of violence. I will not go through it in detail, but it is complex. There are many factors that contribute to violence, and they are listed in this report as breakdown of culture, normalisation of violence in some contemporary communities, policy and governance issues, sociodemographic stresses and alcohol, and there are ecological models which suggest that there is an interconnected and ecological set of circumstances that contribute to violence.

The report goes on to talk about what can be done, as does some of the work that has been done under the national action plan. It talks about the importance of community-led approaches. In seeking to reflect Indigenous voices and Indigenous opinions about what ought to be done to combat violence in Indigenous communities, the report lists a number of community-led approaches, such as: training an Indigenous workforce; distinguishing women's from men's business; using or developing Indigenous materials, such as visual images or artwork; developing culturally appropriate safe houses for women and children; developing more flexible appointments and program sessions; developing programs that include offenders as part of the healing process; developing community-led education about family violence; valuing elders as mentors, and support people playing central roles in programs and services, including women staff at services; developing antiviolence education campaigns to raise public consciousness; and providing community development opportunities to de-normalise violence—for example, promoting the value of women in the community; men supporting women; and increased knowledge that family violence is illegal and unacceptable.

I want to give an example, briefly, of a couple of such programs. One of them is Sisters Day Out, a very successful program that Aboriginal Family Violence Prevention and Legal Service Victoria runs. It is a one-day workshop that engages with Koori women—and, in particular, young Koori women—for the purpose of preventing family violence by facilitating community networks to reduce social isolation; raising awareness of family violence and its underlying causes and impacts; and by providing information to promote community safety. It is a one-day session. It is culturally appropriate. It is not threatening. There is relaxation. There is beauty therapy and beauty treatments. There are exercise activities. They put a lot of emphasis on self-care and wellbeing, and that is a really important mechanism that is out there working now.

Another one is the NO MORE Campaign, founded by Charlie King. I hope that many more sports codes and individual sports clubs will get on board with this men-focused primary prevention program that encourages sporting clubs and organisations to agree to a domestic violence prevention plan.

We have seen cuts from this government in relation to front-line services and family violence, and that is a great shame.

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