Llew O'Brien (Wide Bay, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Before I go on, I would like to acknowledge the very difficult speech just given by the member for Lindsay. It is certainly a display of how domestic violence affects the people who are involved in it, and those around them.

This is a very serious matter and, yes, there is a need to address family violence as a national priority, absolutely. We need to have a coordinated approach to addressing it, we need the appropriate responses to acts of domestic violence and we need the appropriate education to prevent domestic violence. We need to have, as a society, a better understanding of domestic violence. If we are going to tackle this issue at a community and social level, we all need to understand what domestic violence is. With domestic violence, what first comes to mind is a very violent attack by a man on his partner in the family. That is a tragedy, and it is what we need to identify as the most significant and important area of domestic violence that we need to address. But we also need to understand that domestic violence has a number of different levels and, as the Prime Minister said earlier, that domestic violence always starts with disrespect.

Domestic violence also shows its ugly head in control, when the abuser starts to control the victim through any number of different methods—whether it is controlling their social environment, who they are allowed to see or the clothes they are allowed to wear. It really is a terrible, terrible situation to be in, and it spans all cultures and sociodemographic areas—unfortunately, it is particularly prevalent in Indigenous communities. The problem focuses on women, and it should be, because women are predominantly the victims. But an area that I probably recognise, in some ways, more than most is that women can also be offenders when it comes to family violence, and men can be victims.

When I first became a police officer, there was a change to the law that added same-sex couples to the area of family violence. I think we always need to recognise that the family has changed over many years, and that a victim of family violence in a same-sex couple suffers in the same way as a victim in a conventional relationship. We need to respond, and we always need to recognise that. It is something that I have seen over and over again, and it is an area of the community that is often forgotten.

When it comes to education, as parents we need to let our sons know that only cowards beat women. Only cowards commit those acts that destroy families. And, as a father, I want my daughter to know that she does not have to put up with it. As the member for Lindsay said before, quite often women go back, and it is such a complex area. It is so devastating when people look at women who continue to return to violent relationships and they just do not understand the control that their abuser has over them. We need to educate our daughters that they should never put up with being the victim of abuse.

The coalition is acting with regard to family violence. We have implemented quite a number of plans, including the action plan that sets out 36 practical actions under six priority areas. We are doing the work on family violence. Family violence is something that, as a society, we should never put up with. It is one of the motivating factors that sees me here as a member of parliament, and I am proud to be part of a government that is addressing this issue.

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