Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As part of my step-by-step walk against violence against women in Australia, particularly in my electorate of McMillan and across Gippsland, I asked Chris Major, our local police inspector, to give me a briefing on where we are at with policing on this and to ask somebody else: 'What more can we be doing? Step by step, one step at a time—let's have a cultural change.'

It is not just about good men being silent on the issue; it is about good women being silent on the issue too—grandmothers and mothers who know there is something going on in their households or in their extended households and saying nothing. They told me that the police now have the opportunity through their sergeant where they can walk into a household, see the damage done to a woman, and hand the gentleman a sheet and say, 'You're out of here until you can go before a magistrate and sort this out.

Police can walk straight into a house in Dandenong, Pakenham or anywhere and hand a piece of paper that says to that man in that household that has bashed that woman, 'You're out of here until you have seen a magistrate.' So we are not relocating the women and children; we are exiting the man. It is working. It is a very effective tool, and I would like to see it implemented right across Australia.