Marion Scrymgour (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Warringah for bringing this important motion into this parliament. It was only this morning that I stood in the Federation Chamber and talked about the ending of violence against women and children, and that that should be a national priority for this country. The levels of domestic, family and sexual violence across the Northern Territory are unacceptably high, particularly in my electorate of Lingiari. In fact, the Northern Territory has some of the highest rates of domestic, family and sexual violence in Australia, if not the world. Women in remote and regional communities in my electorate are 25 times more likely to be hospitalised for domestic violence than women in major cities. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women experience some of the highest rates of physical violence, resulting in injuries that affect brain function and that can cause permanent disability from severe head trauma.

Part of the work that I've been doing as the local member—I spent too many years, and I'm not going to count them, before I came to the federal parliament. I was a member of the Northern Territory parliament for 12 years. I walked in many rallies with people like Rosalie Kunoth-Monks and Alison Anderson. There was a famous woman, Kumarn Rubuntja, who led the way in Alice Springs and who was brutally murdered at the hands of her husband.

Part of what we need to do—and I was listening to the former speaker and listening to you, Deputy Speaker Claydon—is get a shift amongst our men. There has to be a critical shift. I know that, in the regional and remote communities that I visit in my electorate of Lingiari, there is a lot of conversation between the women and the men about the men needing to stand up and change. Recently all the men in the Central Land Council stood up and passed a resolution that violence against their women must end. So Aboriginal men do want to be part of the solution. We have to start bringing them in and allowing them to be that solution so that our young boys and our young men change the way in which they think. They think it's their right to pummel their wives, if not kill them.

When I was elected to the federal parliament, the Northern Territory government at the time was lifting the stronger futures legislation. I talked in my maiden speech about how alcohol is probably the No. 1 factor and cause of a lot of this violence.

I want to take the time to acknowledge the leadership of the Prime Minister. I don't say this just because I'm on this side. I've had a lot of conversations with the Prime Minister, and I want to acknowledge his leadership. I acknowledge Katy Gallagher, the Minister for Women; and Amanda Rishworth, the Minister for Social Services. I want to quickly acknowledge the work that I'm doing in the Northern Territory with the Minister for Indigenous Australians, Minister Linda Burney; and the Assistant Minister for Indigenous Australians, Senator Malarndirri McCarthy. I think one of the speakers talked about the 500 women. We're trying to look at how we can develop health promotion. We need bilingual speakers who can work within this space. That takes time because you've got to be able to recruit the right people. And it's not just women in this space. We don't just need women to be the bilingual speakers to work towards this issue. We have to recruit and try to get some of our men in there.

This is a harrowing motion. I have seen one too many women killed. My own niece was killed at the hands of her husband. She suffered, over three nights of being brutally bashed, before she couldn't take the beating anymore and she died. I think all of us have these stories. They're terrible stories. You're right, Member for Warringah—we've got to get some outcomes out of that. But I am proud to be part of this government, who is doing something, because we can talk about it and we can feel it but we've got to do something about it, and we are.

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