Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I last spoke in this House about men's violence against women in our society just under a month ago. Since the murder of Fiona Warzywoda in my electorate in Melbourne's west earlier this year, I have committed myself to speaking about this horror in our society at every opportunity.

Based on 2013 data, in the month since I last spoke about men's violence against women, there would have been at least 5,000 further incidences of family violence in Victoria. There would have been over 1,000 breaches of intervention orders, where we have failed to protect those in our society in most need of it. Throughout Australia, there would have been four women murdered by their partner of former partner. That is the average—one women every week.

Think of the anguish we have seen in court today from the Baden-Clay family and re-run this trauma every week of the year and you can begin to appreciate the scale of the tragedy we are confronting. As reported incidents of family violence in Victoria are continuing to rise, these extrapolations are likely to have been conservative. Given the scale of these numbers, it is easy to see how one in three Australian women have been victims of violence since their teens and how one in five have been a victim of sexual violence. Think about the women you know in your life—you friends, family, professional peers and just imagine. This is a miserable, uncomfortable topic to speak about in this House, but speak about it we must, as this is the only way that we can begin to reduce, and ultimately eliminate, this cancer in our community.

Members of this parliament were talking about this difficult issue in the Mural Hall this morning at the launch of the second action plan of the ten-year, National Strategy to Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children. Commencing in 2010, the national plan sought to lay national-level infrastructure to inform policy making and service delivery in this area and to engage the community in the effort to reduce violence against women and their children. As the Chair of the Foundation to Prevent Violence against Women and their Children, Natasha Stott Despoja, told those gathered this morning, the underlying cause of men's violence against women is gender inequality. The national strategy seeks to address this through primary prevention—by changing attitudes and behaviours of young men and boys in our community towards women; ensuring that boys and young men both see and treat women as genuine equals.

This change takes time. We can only change these attitudes, buttressed as they are by a society in which women have been disadvantaged for centuries, by continually and relentlessly chipping away at instances of gender inequality wherever we see them, whether they be institutional or individual. This is why, during the last parliamentary break, I spoke out against a series of comments attributed to New South Wales state MP, John Williams, at a recent National Party New South Wales state preselection process. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Mr Williams verbally attacked a female New South Wales cabinet minister, Robyn Parker, in front of a hundred colleagues as part of a National Party pre-selection contest, threatening to 'tear her a new orifice' and saying she had 'never had a real man'.

I do not condemn these comments for partisan reasons. In fact, I have previously recognised the excellent work on this issue by the member for Mallee, a proud member of the National Party and an even prouder one after the government responded to his calls to implement a nationally-enforceable intervention order that will help protect the women in his electorate, which is bounded by two state borders. I spoke out about Mr Williams's comments not out of partisanship but because it is comments like these that contribute to the environment of gender inequality identified by Ms Stott Despoja and the national plan as the underlying cause of men's violence against women.

We need to be working towards a society in which comments like these are condemned in the room as they are made. In this respect, I particularly call on the New South Wales Deputy Premier, Andrew Stoner, who was present when these comments were first made, to reconsider his position on this issue. When Mr Williams comments were first reported in the media, a spokesman for Mr Stoner told The Sydney Morning Herald:

… it was not the deputy premier's role to censure another member in a party forum.

I believe this is a mistake. I want to take this opportunity to appeal to Mr Stoner, free from partisan rancour and in the spirit of a shared intent to push back against men's violence against women, to think again and publicly condemn Mr Williams's comments. As the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children makes clear, it is every man's responsibility to speak out against comments like this. This obligation is especially important for men in leadership positions. It would be a particularly powerful moment if Mr Stoner was able to consider his position and say publicly that he had reflected on these issues and that he recognised his responsibility, not as a politician but as a man, to condemn these comments. This kind of self-reflection is not easy. I would greatly admire him and heap praise on him in this place if he had the courage to do this.

It is only through a series of lessons like this that we will learn as a society how to change the environment of inequality and hostility towards women in our community under which men's violence against women is perpetrated. We will only break down this culture if we have the courage to call out those attitudes and behaviours wherever we see them, even where it is uncomfortable for us because of the individuals or institutions involved.