Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As we know, in April there were a range of rallies around this nation which expressed frustration and anger about the scourge that is violence against women and family violence. I attended one of those rallies in my electorate, in Cobram. That community had just been through a tragedy of a woman losing her life, and the rawness and the anger were palpable. There were many speakers that day, one of whom was Nicole. She spoke of her experiences of violence and coercion at the hands of a partner, and she was disappointed in the way that some in the community had not taken her experience seriously. She and others spoke also about systemic failure, in many cases in relation to apprehended violence orders. There were many placards that day, but the one that affected me the most was a placard that said: 'What do we want? Peace in men's hearts.' I said at the time, after the event, that I think most men do have peace in their hearts, but, for those who don't, if you reach out and get help and change your behaviour, you have courage, and, if you allow your anger and your problems to spill over into hurting women, you are a coward.

On Tuesday I co-hosted a forum with Senator Pocock and the member for Cowper, amongst others, in which we tried to unpack some of these issues. The overwhelming impetus for the forum and the start of the discussion was that men need to be in the room, men need to be in the conversation and men need to be welcome to be in the conversation. The 'All men are toxic and broken' narrative doesn't help us to get where we need to.

We heard from many people, including Dr Zac Seidler, who made some excellent points in relation to the causes of this violent behaviour. He made the point that young boys don't think they're going to grow up to hurt women. So something happens as they're growing up that's a source of deep unhappiness. We've got to find ways to intervene as a community, as a society, to try and stop that unhappiness and those problems spilling over into violence against women. He made a number of other points, including that culturally we need to make it so we're proud of the achievements of our girlfriends, wives, partners, so that sense of equality exists. The member for Cowper came up with some excellent examples of intervention programs in Indonesia and a compulsory part of the curriculum that talks about respectful relationships. I think we should look at doing that here.