Allegra Spender (Wentworth, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Newcastle for moving a motion on such an important issue. Last Saturday was the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and this year it marked the launch of the UNITE campaign, 16 days of action across the world, calling on governments to invest in preventing violence against women and girls. I'm wearing orange today, as a number of my crossbench colleagues are, in support of this work.

Intimate partner violence is the greatest health risk factor for women aged 25 to 44, and that's in this country. An estimated one in six women aged 18 years or over has experienced violence by a partner in this country. But it's not in faraway places, as we often think. Right in my community of Wentworth, when I spoke to the local police commander, they told me that up to 50 per cent of their time in their local police stations was taken up with domestic violence issues. It is everywhere, in places you do not expect.

Just last month, 21-year-old Lilie James, a water polo coach at St Andrew's Cathedral School, a school that many Wentworth students go to, was brutally murdered. In her family's words, Lilie was vibrant, outgoing and very much loved by her family and friends. Her murder was a senseless act of violence and was deeply felt by people in my community.

Ninety per cent of Australians recognise this as a national issue, but many of them still think it's far away. The harsh reality is that it happens every single day, and it happens close to home. Domestic violence is not confined to any particular area, age, ethnicity or socioeconomic status. The perpetrator might be the father of her children, a well-respected community figure and a good bloke. We must confront the truth that someone we care for or even look up to might be capable of such violence. We must place the responsibility where it belongs—not on the woman's actions, but on the choices of the man who killed her.

Violence doesn't emerge in a vacuum. It thrives in environments where boys are taught to feel entitled to relationships, to sex, to decision-making and to getting what they want—an environment where men rise to leadership positions despite harmful attitudes towards women and where women's roles are still sharply defined so that they shoulder the majority of parenting, housework, and care responsibilities. And fatal violence is almost always preceded by other forms of violence. Disturbingly, data from the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research indicates that coercive control behaviours are present in over half of all domestic violence incidents. While steps have been taken to criminalise coercive control in various states, we have a long way to go. Government has taken steps, but we have much more work to do.

We have stepped forward in this parliament on steps like domestic violence leave, financial support and consent education. However, we have much further to go, including supporting grassroots organisations with consistent funding and better funding certainty so they know at the end of each financial year whether they will be able to offer services the next year; providing better data more quickly; providing more consistent definitions of violence across our different states and territories; ensuring that we actually undertake early intervention to stop violence at its source; ensuring that we make it easier to prosecute violence against women; and, finally, ensuring that we have an environment that empowers women economically. That means increasing paid parental leave and getting more men involved in caring, because we know that, if women continue to shoulder the domestic burdens in amounts disproportionate to those for men, they don't have the same economic strength, and this feeds into violence, into coercive control and, I think, into the culture of men and women that we still have in this country.

Before I wrap up, I want to pay tribute to the people in Wentworth who are making amazing strides in this area. We have Bondi Beach Cottage, which provides counselling, child care and support; With You We Can with Sarah Rosenberg, who provides a pathway and explanation for how to prosecute violence against women; ReLove with Ren Fernando and Ben Stammer, who last week held a fundraiser where they talked about providing furniture for those people escaping domestic violence; the Lokahi Foundation, which provides long-term support; and, finally, Chanel Contos, who has done so much to advance consent education amongst young people in Australia.

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