Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last Wednesday I attended a family violence forum in my electorate. The forum was organised by my two state members, the member for Broadmeadows and the member for Yuroke. Its purpose was to facilitate input from our community in the form of a submission to the Royal Commission into Family Violence. The Royal Commission into Family Violence was established by the Victorian government as part of its election commitment to tackle this very dangerous and prevalent form of violence perpetrated against women and children in our community.

The forum provided an opportunity for the local community, including survivors of family violence, to be involved in a conversation with service providers, members of the Victoria Police, parliamentarians and other members of the broader Broadmeadows community in order to be able to discuss a range of matters, which included, importantly, the impact of family violence on women and children and the availability and cultural appropriateness of responses and the types of services that are available to the community and, in particular, to those who are victims of family violence.

We also discussed the value of education programs for young people as a preventative tool—to re-educate young people and hopefully change the way they behave towards each other, in particular how young men behave towards young women.

According to Victoria Police data from the 2012-13 financial year, my local council area of Hume was one of two metropolitan Melbourne council areas to have a rate of more than 1,500 incidents of family violence per 100,000 people, with some 2,909 incidents reported in Hume. The reality is likely much worse—because there is a high level of underreporting. That underreporting of family violence is largely a result of the very high level of non-English-speaking-background residents in my electorate. I therefore welcome this commission and am absolutely certain that the current demands on local resources, which was raised as one of the main issues of concern at the forum, is an issue not only in my electorate but across the board in Victoria—and possibly across Australia.

Every second woman who seeks out refuge in a shelter in Australia is turned away. I think that is a very worrying statistic when you think about the large number of women who have to flee violent family situations. One of the issues raised in relation to local resources was the lack of cultural and linguistic resources for women from culturally diverse backgrounds. For my electorate, that is a very important issue and I would like it addressed as soon as possible.