Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) violence against women is a national emergency;

(b) in October 2023, six women in Australia were killed within a fortnight, five allegedly by men known to them;

(c) approximately one Australian woman is killed every nine days by a male intimate partner;

(d) Aboriginal women are 11 times more likely to die from family violence than non-Aboriginal women;

(e) intimate partner violence is the biggest preventable threat to the health, wellbeing and safety of Australian women; and

(f) eliminating family violence requires national leadership, coordination and investment to build the evidence base needed to identify definitive points of intervention to prevent violence and change perpetrator behaviour;

(2) acknowledges that:

(a) Australia currently has no national toll recording fatal violence against women and children;

(b) Australia currently has no funded national reporting mechanism dedicated to the detailed reporting of femicide, and the killing of children; and

(c) tolls are an effective tool for prevention and awareness; and

(3) calls on the Government to establish The Australian Family Homicide Index to generate the evidence required to inform new and improved responses to family violence and help save lives.

On 20 October the body of Krystal Marshall is found after a house fire at Aldinga Beach in South Australia. A man is later arrested and charged with murder and arson. On 23 October police are called to an address in the ACT following reports of a woman with stab wounds. Thi Thuy Huong Nguyen is pronounced dead at the scene. Her husband is charged with murder. On 25 October the body of Lilie James is found with horrific head injuries in the gym toilets at a Sydney private school. She was allegedly murdered by her ex-partner and colleague Paul Thijssen. On 29 October Analyn Osias is found dying at her home in Bendigo, where her two primary school age children are present. A man who is known to her is charged with murder. On 30 October the body of Alice McShera is found at Perth's Crown Towers resort. A man believed to be in a relationship with her is charged with murder.

In October 2023 six women in Australia were killed within a fortnight, five allegedly by men known to them. This month, November 2023, six women in Australia were killed in seven days, five allegedly by men. These deaths were preventable. Intimate partner violence is the biggest preventable threat to the health, wellbeing and safety of Australian women. Approximately one Australian woman is killed every nine days by a male intimate partner. Aboriginal women are 11 times more likely to die from family violence than non-Aboriginal women. Every fortnight in Australia a child is killed by a parent. Every two minutes across the country police are called to a family and domestic violence matter. Across south-east Melbourne, including my electorate of Goldstein, half of the police case load is family and domestic violence.

We must do more if we're going to end violence against women and children within a generation as the government's national plan sets out to do.

That's why I've put forward this motion today. To quote former senator Natasha Stott Despoja's address to the National Foundation for Australian Women two weeks ago, 'We need to turbocharge our efforts.' Natasha is an eminent South Australian. In South Australia, four women were killed last week, allegedly by intimate partners. The list of killings goes on and on and on. I say to everyone in this place: what better time to speak to your communities than now, during the global 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence? Eliminating family violence requires leadership, coordination and investment to build the evidence base needed to identify definitive points of intervention, to prevent violence, to change perpetrator behaviour and ultimately to change the attitudes and inequalities that drive violence across the community.

On Saturday the government announced that it'll resource the Australian Institute of Criminology to report quarterly on rates of intimate-partner homicide. Reporting matters, but it does not prevent. While I welcome this announcement, it doesn't address the full range of Australians killed by domestic, family and sexual violence. Child victims will be invisible in this reporting, a curious omission given the national plan's commitment to children as victims-survivors in their own right. Reporting via the dashboard will be retrospective, published once every three months. How is it that we can report live on the road toll but only four times a year on intimate-partner homicide and never on children killed?

State based and national road tolls have driven public awareness around road deaths and driver behaviour. This is why I'm calling on the government to establish the Australian family homicide prevention initiative to work in partnership with their announced dashboard and to generate the evidence required to prevent future deaths. It would provide the evidence base, tools and guidance required to inform improved intervention and prevention, document all acts of family violence related to homicides, and offer an independent assessment of when interventions could have taken place and what risks were present prior to those deaths. This would provide an accessible, interconnected data repository of all domestic and family violence related killings, for use by practitioners, policymakers, researchers and the media. It would sit well alongside the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children's goal to reduce the number of women killed by their intimate partners by 25 per cent each year.

As you leave parliament tonight, I ask you to look up at Parliament House illuminated in brilliant orange, the universal colour that brings recognition to this epidemic, and think about what you can do as a leader in your community to stop men from killing women. Enough is enough.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and reserve my right to speak.

Brian Mitchell (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Goldstein for moving this motion in recognition of the national emergency that is violence perpetrated against women in Australia. I'd like to thank the member for Newcastle for moving her motion earlier today, and I thank all the speakers on this very troubling topic. There have been several speakers before me this morning who have highlighted the devastating impacts of intimate partner violence and domestic violence on women and their families, including their children, on communities and on the nation more broadly. The statistics are devastating. Approximately one Australian woman is killed every nine days by a male intimate partner. One in three Australian women have experienced physical violence perpetrated by a man since the age of 15—one in three. Aboriginal women, as the member for Goldstein noted, are 11 times as likely to die from family violence as non-Aboriginal women. There are 49 women who have been killed by acts of violence as of 17 November this year, 2023. We know that violence affects women of every age, from every cultural background, from different jobs and from different levels of education or income, living in different areas and leading different lives. No woman is immune, and this shouldn't be the case.

Last week, on 25 November, we marked the United Nations International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, beginning 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence. You'll have noticed, Deputy Speaker, some of us are wearing orange today in recognition of that.

This global campaign calls on citizens to show how much they care about ending violence against women and girls and calls on governments worldwide to share how they are investing in gender based violence prevention. In Northern Tasmania a walk to end violence against women and girls will take place daily from today to 10 December, with the Migrant Resource Centre in Northern Tasmania and Citizen Tasmania leading the walk on Wednesday. It will be leaving from Launceston Town Hall at 12.30 pm and making its way across the city. Community members can join at any point along the route, and it will return to the town hall at 1.15 pm. In the south of the state the Tasman Bridge will be lit up in orange for a week in recognition of the period of activism. The importance of community activism cannot be overstated, and I take the member for Goldstein's point: so much more needs to be done by governments—federal, state, territory—and internationally, but community activism has a big role to play here as well.

Evidence shows improving attitudes and understanding is a key method of prevention of sexual harm and violence. To improve attitudes and understanding, we need to improve awareness. The devastating statistics we are seeing of violence being perpetrated in homes across this country show how deep-seeded the cultural issues are. You only need to see the cesspit that is social media today to see the wanton misogyny that infects social media. The troubling values that lead to domestic and intimate partner violence are breeding new perpetrators, and I can't help but feel that social media is breeding new perpetrators in the way relationships with women are fomented.

The Albanese Labor government is committed to the goal of ending violence against women and children in one generation. It's a lofty goal but it's one we are committed to. We are taking immediate and practical steps to prevent violence against women. We legislated 10 paid days of family and domestic violence leave for all employees, including casuals. People shouldn't have to choose between their own safety and their children's safety without losing income or their job completely. Regular income is an important aspect of family stability, and these 10 days give women the time to act and make the life plans necessary to escape a dangerous situation; they can get to removalists, see a lawyer and do all the things that need to be done to escape domestic violence. Our Housing Australia Future Fund will help deliver the government's commitment to 30,000 new social and affordable homes in just five years, and that includes 4,000 homes for women and children impacted by domestic and family violence. We have boosted funding for consent education, with $3.5 million in direct funding to Teach Us Consent, as part of a broader package of measures targeting sexual violence and consent announced in the budget.

As violence against women continues to plague Australian communities, we must take important steps to address violent behaviour before it starts. I can't help but repeat that; that is the most important thing to me. We need to reach kids, particularly boys before they become men, and change their values early so they can respect women later in life.

Kylea Tink (North Sydney, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I start today by thanking the member for Goldstein for bringing this motion to the House. Along with others on this crossbench, the member has been an incredibly strong advocate in this place for women's safety since coming here 18 months ago. I thank her for continuing to ensure it stays front and centre on our agenda.

While many of us turn our minds to end-of-year celebrations, based on this year's track record up to seven women could lose their lives at the hands of somebody they have loved before this year ends. The sad truth is: while we may anticipate it based on our experience so far this year, we simply do not have the systems or information to enable us to move in a meaningful way to stop it. Instead it will be the headlines we read or the news we hear that will tell us where and when it has happened, and by then our concern will be worth little to the grieving families and communities.

As this motion asserts, we are in the middle of a national emergency. Yet just how far that emergency spreads, how deeply it simmers and how effectively our efforts to address it are working are simply not known because, as a country, we do not have a dedicated national real-time tracking mechanism. We know that last year 56 women were killed by their intimate partner in the space of 52 weeks. That's more than one woman a week—one daughter, one sister, one friend, one mother, one colleague. Whilst you would think a number like that would have been enough to shock us into action, 2023 has been worse, with one woman killed every five days in Australia.

Alarmingly, Aboriginal women are 11 times more likely to die from family violence than are non-Aboriginal women. Devastatingly, a child is killed by a parent once every two weeks in our country. This happens even though our police are called to family or domestic violence matters every two minutes.

This violence is not confined to a particular postcode. In my electorate of North Sydney, services to support women and families experiencing violence, overbearing control and coercion are overwhelmed and simply unable to meet the growing demand. There would not be a week that goes by where my team and I would not receive a call from a woman desperate for assistance, and I'm sure that, as a member in this place, my experience is not isolated. Surely, then, we should be doing everything in our power to both identify those at risk much earlier and ensure our systems enable us to deploy resources efficiently and effectively to stop this horrendous loss of life, for each of these deaths is preventable. We do need more accommodation, we do need more professional assistance and we do need to flip the system on its head, enabling those that are currently cast as victims to be put in a position of power whilst those who commit the violence are forced to face the consequences of their actions sooner and get help where appropriate.

Yet, despite the tragedy we see play out time and again, tangible action has been too slow. Ideas that have been floated for months, if not years, on how to stop this loss of life have been waiting for someone with the political will to pick them up. That political will has arrived with the crossbench of this 47th Parliament. Along with the member for Goldstein and others, I commit to ensuring North Sydney's voice is heard consistently advocating for us to do better. It is past time the Australian government established and funded a dedicated real-time national toll to accurately track and record fatal violence against women and children, because national real-time reporting mechanisms work. They focus the system's attention on providing valuable insight into whether interventions are working. Just look at the improvement of our road safety, as the member for Goldstein said, since the introduction of national road tolls, or at the increase in the detection of diseases such as breast and bowel cancer since we started tracking them.

To shift something, you must be able to see it for what it is, and to see it for what it is you must be able to measure it. That's why I am proud to add my community's voice to the voices from Goldstein who are calling on the government to go further than it currently has and establish the Australian Family Homicide Index. Once established, this index would ensure all acts of family violence related homicides are documented, and it will provide us with the tools required to develop improved intervention and prevention practices. At the same time, it will also enable independent assessments of interventions and risks and, importantly, provide accessible data that those working in this area can use to inform their work.

While it's not a solution in and of itself, this work, combined with other initiatives under the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children could very well be the piece that finally shifts the dial—a dial that is well past due to be turned. So let's turn it.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to add my voice this morning to the calls from this place around the notions that family and domestic violence is preventable and that it's up to legislators to ensure that we get these things right. I'm proudly a member of the Albanese Labor government, where Minister Rishworth has announced that our intention is to make a difference in a generation. I am reminded, when I think about it, of some of the work that happened in the state of Victoria.

Luke Batty lost his life in February 2014, and it's fair to say it shook the country. We've had data since then of the number of women murdered annually, but, if we go back to 2014, we see it was a pivotal year in my state of Victoria, the state the member for Goldstein also represents, where Minister Fiona Richardson came to the fore as the first Minister for Prevention of Family Violence in Australia, with the first royal commission and with the first mention of measuring the toll: the Family Violence Index. It was a breakthrough moment—one that many people around this country probably saw as just another day in politics. It wasn't just another day in politics. It changed the way we view family and domestic violence. It changed the way we talk about it, but it also changed people's understanding.

One of the bottom-line things that came through that royal commission was the notion that the cause of family and domestic violence was a lack of gender equity, and that is undeniable. If we had gender equity, we could drive these terrible figures down.

So I want to pay tribute today to my friend Fiona Richardson—who, of course, has now left us—for her work for the royal commission that happened in Victoria and has driven so much of the work around the country, and for driving home that notion that we measure what we care about and that, when we measure things, things change. We measured the economy, CPI and all sorts of other things because we think they're important. The notions around family and domestic violence, the measurement of it and how that will impact us are at work here in this place. As my colleague mentioned, the family and domestic violence leave legislation, which provides 10 days of leave, will help us to measure the incidence of family and domestic violence. As I've said in this place countless times—not to be too cynical—when there's an economic cost to it, suddenly the world will pay attention. Suddenly it won't be about bruises; it will be about money. Sadly, I think, that will see more action.

So it is very important that, nearly 10 years ago, Fiona Richardson led change in the state of Victoria. That change is proudly picked up here in this place, the federal parliament, by Minister Rishworth and Minister Gallagher in their roles in the Labor government. I look forward to those changes coming in for us to be measuring the things that we are now going to be measuring so that we can set the baselines and make sure that we're driving those things backwards rather than forwards.

Ross Vasta (Bonner, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.