Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Monday marked the beginning of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence. My home state of Victoria has made its theme for the 16 days 'Respect is…' As they say, not all disrespect leads to violence against women but all violence against women begins with disrespect. It is a big question but how do the seemingly harmless attitudes, behaviours and social pressures that men engage in and experience influence and lead to negative and potentially violent behaviour towards women?

I wanted to share a story from a young woman in my office that goes towards the theme of respect. She is nearing 30 now but remembers clear as day this incident from when she was 17. On a walk after school she waited at a traffic light to cross. A middle-aged man in his car wound down the passenger window, leant across a primary-school-aged boy—perhaps his son—to wolf whistle at her before laughing and driving off. In an instant she felt unsafe, uncomfortable and disrespected. And what of the young boy? What was going through his mind?

In a country like ours where one in two women will have experienced sexual harassment since the age of 15, her story is not unique. Anecdotes like this go to the fundamental idea of what respect towards women and girls should be, or is, and what it clearly is not. On that day, that primary-school-aged boy was being sent a clear message, having behaviour modelled to him that says a woman's right to peace, safety and to respect comes second to a man's desire to harass her. These attitudes of disrespect, if learnt young and not stopped, do grow over time and reinforce the cycle of harassment and abuse that women and girls face each day. We cannot let this cycle continue. The cycle must be reversed. The boy in the car should have had respectful behaviour modelled to him.

So the question becomes what can we and what are we, as a government, doing to break this cycle? What are we all doing? I genuinely believe that the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children in a generation will help this process to end this national crisis. It centres the experience and needs of victim-survivors and, importantly, it looks towards genuine measures for preventing the cycle of violence before it can start. It promotes respectful relationships and consent training in schools, employer led workplace initiatives to embed equality and support for men and boys to develop supportive and healthy relationships with their male peer—behaviours that send a different message to that boy in the car.

But there will be challenges we will face along the way. Some men—very loudly—have come to the view women's equality is akin to a zero-sum gain. Funnelling themselves into extremist views, misogynistic online spaces and spurred on by the Andrew Tates of the world, these men and boys have concocted the idea that, if there is a winner through equality, there has got to be a loser and they are the loser. Of course, this couldn't be further from the truth. But unpacking and reframing these attitudes and men's understanding of them, especially young boys, is the key part of driving long-lasting behavioural and cultural change. Long-term behavioural change is, unfortunately, by its very nature, not immediate. When a woman is being murdered on average every three days in this country, the idea of a consistent but ultimately generational change in men's behaviour doesn't provide much solace, or I assume it wouldn't provide much solace to the women and girls who are unsafe today. It is why the Albanese Labor government is investing in family, domestic and sexual violence response for frontline services, funding the escaping violence payment for those fleeing domestic and family violence, and rolling out education programs today to stop violence before it starts. Where there are areas we can do better on, I commit, and I assume my colleagues here in this place will commit, to championing these solutions within government as well as locally in my community.

Disrespect towards and violence against women and girls is a national crisis that needs to be on the agenda every day, not just during the 16 days of activism. It won't end by politicians stepping into this space and making statements once a year, patting ourselves on the back and then going on our merry way. We must look at the ways to break the cycle of disrespect and violence in the short, medium and long term, and ensure victim-survivors are heard and believed.

For me personally, it means proactively having conversations with the men and boys in my life, in the community that I represent, calling out harmful attitudes towards women and girls wherever I see them, and modelling respectful behaviours to boys and men. That is what respect means to me and what I commit to do every day.

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