Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Newcastle for moving this motion. Firstly, I would like to acknowledge all those victims, those 66 victims, who have been murdered this year. My thoughts and prayers go to the families of those victims. I would also acknowledge victim-survivors for the work that you do in speaking out against domestic violence within Australia.

All governments regardless of what side they sit on, regardless of what level, have tried to address this pandemic of domestic violence in Australia. It should be above politics, it should be bipartisan—how we work together—and I think that we do do that. We do recognise that it has to be a bipartisan approach. But we have failed. We have failed to address the core issue. I will be blunt: we have failed because we have not looked at prevention and intervention the way we should have. We have looked at response and recovery. I commend Labor on their commitment of $4 billion towards the prevention of family violence. But the fact is—and it was the same with the coalition when we were in government—a fraction of those billions of dollars goes towards prevention and intervention. Seventeen per cent of the $4 billion currently is going to measures to stop domestic violence. Let's call it for what it is. Men—not all men, but men—are the problem. So, in addressing the solution, we have to address men. We have to address solutions that address the causal problem or the causal issue. Whether that's men with drug or alcohol issues that lead to domestic violence or whether that's men who are coming from a place of trauma from domestic violence in their own childhoods, we have to address that.

As the shadow assistant minister for the prevention of family violence, I have travelled Australia and had almost 100 meetings with victims-survivors, agencies, police and support networks. We're now coming to that conversation. They agree. If we don't support men then how can we have healthy men? I am not suggesting that a man who commits an offence against a woman shouldn't be subject to the sentencing principles under the Crime (Sentencing Procedure) Act of general deterrence and specific deterrence. They should go to jail. But what is there after they go to jail? Are there support networks to address the alcohol problem or the drug problem? That's why we need men's behavioural programs all around Australia. We need to have the funding for those programs. We need to have a nationally recognised program that is funded. There are waiting lists of hundreds and hundreds of men trying to get on these programs to improve themselves, to change their history and to change their future. So we have to be there to implement those programs. We need a national workforce funded to do that—somebody coming out of a TAFE or university course who says: 'I am not going to be an aged-care worker or a childcare worker; I want to move into a recognised workforce that supports men to change their behaviour, to change our future.'

Then there's the education piece. We need to get a national curriculum into the school at kindergarten level, and that needs to travel with that child from kindergarten all the way through to year 12. It should not just be for boys. It should be across the board about healthy relationships and what a healthy person looks like. That's because a healthy child becomes a healthy adult and we will have a healthy society.

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