Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Hansard source

I think a lot of Australians sometimes think that our political system is broken and that not very much happens in parliament. They get sick of the to-and-fro. We have an adversarial system in our parliament. But I want to say to Australians listening to this debate that, on the issue of gendered violence, the whole parliament does think it is important. From listening to the excellent contributions so far, I think every member of parliament knows that we've got to do better.

We wake too often to a story of another woman having been murdered by someone who said they loved them. Enough is enough is enough. We cannot become immune to this tragedy or shrug our shoulders and say, 'Well, this is the way things are.' Family violence, violence against women and children, does not distinguish between the suburb you live in, what school you went to, how much money you have in the bank account, what ethnicity you are or what part of Australia you live in. The data shows that 2.2 million Australians have experienced physical and/or sexual violence from their partners, and it says that 3.6 million Australians have experience emotional abuse from a partner—and, let's be honest, that's just the people who are willing to say they experienced emotional abuse. Then you've got the kids who have to live with the trauma of abuse. That's a little bit about what I'm going to talk about today.

Men can experience violence like women can. Most blokes are simply not violent, but the research is clear that there's a gendered pattern. Women and their kids are disproportionately, hugely, the victims. Women are much more likely than men to experience sexual and emotional violence from an intimate partner. I'm afraid the numbers don't lie—although I want to move beyond the numbers. It is terrible that one in six of our sisters, mothers, daughters and fellow Australian women have experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner since the age of 15. I think it's about one in 18 men. One in four women have reported experiencing emotional abuse by an intimate partner since the age of 15, and those are the ones who report it.

Gendered violence is not new in this country. We're better at talking about it, and we're better at measuring some of it, but I know that for a lot of our colleagues in the parliament and also, perhaps, a lot of adults listening to parliament today—think back to your school days. There might have been a kid who turned up with bruises they didn't want to talk about. Perhaps there was the weird kid who no-one picked for the team, who would sit in the corner and who didn't seem to have much lunch. Perhaps there were the kids who you would talk to at school but who would make every excuse not to have their friends come to their house. I think the signs have been there for generations, but the awareness and the willingness to go hard against the issue hasn't.

I know that tonight there'll be too many children living in dysfunctional homes. There will be kids tonight who might even come home from secondary school or uni, and their mum will have the light on or off on the porch, and that will be a signal to say if dad is in a good mood or not. Your home shouldn't be where you feel that you've got to walk on eggshells, as if you're negotiating a minefield. I know that tonight there'll be so many households where there'll be mitigation strategies in place to try and appease anger and aggro.

I also understand that some of the men who do these heinous things can be great blokes in the workplace and can be friendly neighbours—street angel, home devil. I get that, for men who perpetrate violence against women, there could be reasons. They could be in the grip of alcoholism—or an alcoholism accelerant—drugs or gambling. Maybe their own childhood was terrible and they didn't have good role models, and that trauma of their childhood just replicates. These things may explain it but they cannot excuse it. They're committing crimes.

What is so difficult, though, is there will be women with a desire to escape violence but overwhelmed by the need to stay. It could be financial. It could be the need to protect the kids. It could be the uncertainty of fear of the change, or it could be they are worried about angering the perpetrator even more.

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