Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Gender based violence is an epidemic in our country. Thirty-nine per cent of women have experienced violence since the age of 15. Thirty-one per cent of women have experienced physical violence and 22 per cent have experienced sexual violence. Twelve per cent of adults reported having seen domestic violence against their mothers when they were children. Women are more likely to experience violence from someone they know than from a stranger—35 per cent to 11 per cent. Twenty-five per cent of women have experienced violence, emotional abuse or financial abuse from a cohabiting partner since the age of 15. Women with disability are more likely to experience violence, with 50 per cent of women with an intellectual disability experiencing sexual violence. Fifty-three per cent of women have experienced sexual harassment. On average, one woman is killed every nine days by a current or former partner.

According to the research group Counting Dead Women Australia, 64 women were killed in violent incidents in 2023. In 2021-22, 4,620 women aged 15 or over were hospitalised due to family and domestic violence. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are 31 times more likely to be hospitalised by family and domestic violence, with non-Indigenous men making up a significant portion of the perpetrators. Our Watch research shows that around 25 per cent of men in Australia say that they have used physical or sexual violence against women. Gendered violence against women is estimated to cost Australia $26 billion a year. Financial abuse is estimated to cost $10.9 billion, of which $5.7 billion is borne directly by the victims—those same women who turn up in homelessness shelters in their latter years. We talk a lot about family and domestic violence in this place, and they are some very sobering statistics.

In 2022 the government launched the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children. This is a 10-year plan for state and Commonwealth governments that looks at prevention, early intervention, response, recovery and healing. In the last three budgets this government has invested $3.4 billion; states and territories fund services, not-for-profits and charities fundraise for services and still these statistics persist. And each statistic represents countless lives, real human beings, lives lost, suffering, fear and disadvantage. To say this is an epidemic is understating it. If any other cause of death and injury, not to mention cost to the taxpayer and the economy—if there were anything else causing this much damage to 51 per cent of the community, it would be an emergency.

I think it's sometimes easy to think everyone knows this, everyone cares and everyone wants something done about it. In here we talk about this quite a lot. We hear the statistics. We meet the survivors and the families of those killed. But I know that every time I put something up on social media about women—it doesn't even have to be about violence against women—I need to keep a sharp eye out for the trolls.

I do wonder if maybe the language we use is wrong, as we know the expression 'just a domestic' used to be used to minimise what was happening behind closed doors to clearly align in this being a private matter. Maybe using terms like 'domestic violence' also minimises what is happening. Maybe, if we refer to what's happening as murder, assault and torture, the seriousness of what is happening to a very significant part of the Australian population might get through. The definition of the word 'domestic' relates to the running of a home or to family relations, and the only relevance here is that some of it happens in a domestic setting.

I would like to finish by dedicating this speech to the late Helen Oxenham OAM. Helen Oxenham was a stalwart of the women's movement in South Australia. She grew up in a violent household in Ireland, one of six children, where her mother experienced violence and the children saw it. After migrating to Adelaide with her husband and hearing the stories of her friends going through similar violence with no supports, no services, she was instrumental in setting up the first women's shelter, in Christies Beach, in 1977. She sold lamingtons to fundraise to support this. Helen spent her entire life campaigning against domestic violence and promoting gender equity.

She died recently, at age 93, and her Irish funeral and wake were attended by hundreds of mourners, from women that she had helped over the decades and their now adult children to leaders in the gender equality movement and in the anti-domestic-violence movement, local community groups, politicians and community leaders. Vale, Helen, and thank you for all you did. You made a difference to so many lives.

Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Community Safety, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this very important statement on ending gender based violence. The sad reality is, when you look at the figures for family violence—and it sounds awful to use the words 'family violence'—they are going up all the time. But in some ways things have changed. I go back to my time in the Victorian police force. A lot of times, when I was at Boronia criminal investigations branch, there would a violent domestic and, sadly, it was always the woman who would end up being badly beaten, in some cases raped. It was all about control. I remember one time in particular, one of the saddest cases we had, where a lady was badly, badly beaten. We put the brief together to go into the County Court to charge the husband. Then she came in a month later to withdraw the charges against him. In the background, the husband was just kind of giving us a wink. That's what happened in those days. The police wouldn't actually push a case unless we had a victim. When it comes to family violence, it has changed for the better over time, and the courts actually take action on what the police present, even though you can have a reluctant victim.

I will just talk about the La Trobe stats. Sadly, La Trobe, in the south-east of Victoria, hit the media for the wrong reasons recently, when it came to Cardinia Shire crime stats. The family violence rate is up 7.3 per cent compared to the previous year. Amazingly, 1,669 incidents were recorded up to March 2024. The government promised an additional 500 frontline workers, and they were meant to have delivered 352 of the 500 workers by now. The government haven't met that target. They must meet that target, but 136 is all they have at the moment.

Community legal centres are so important. I've had a lot of dealings with the Narre Warren community legal service and I know the support they provide to women. I want to really focus on migrant women, because that's the No. 1 issue when it comes to my office, and I'm also the shadow minister for multicultural affairs. I will talk about an incident that happened not long ago. The Victoria Police do a fantastic job. They arrested a person who was threatening to have his wife deported back to another country—I won't say the country. She had the courage to call Victoria Police. They came and arrested him, and my office have been dealing with this lady. We found out what he had actually been doing, and this is something I've written to the Victorian chief commissioner about.

We find, when it comes to multicultural communities, that if a person hasn't been in Australia for a number of years, they don't understand the court process. In this case, the person had been here for a number of years, but she had no idea. She had been totally isolated by the husband. When it came to her permanent residency, the husband would get all the emails from Immigration but never applied for permanent residency and wouldn't allow her to get a drivers licence. He said, 'You don't need to work.' If she went out anywhere, she'd be bombarded by SMSs and calls asking, 'Where are you?' It was what we call coercive control. When the police took the offender, the husband, to court, he was locked up for two weeks.

The problem was, when it came to the victim, she didn't have any understanding of the court process at all. She thought she had to get a legal representative to take her husband to court and defend herself. That's when we had to go and explain what was occurring. I've suggested to Victoria Police that they take a proactive stance when it comes to court proceedings. I've made two points. In cases of breaches of intervention orders, it is important for the victims to understand that the police act as the prosecutor. It's not a requirement for the victim to actually get a lawyer. The aggrieved member does not necessarily need to engage a lawyer. And it would be prudent for the police to maintain regular contact with victims, perhaps every two weeks. While this may be time consuming, it would provide much-needed support to the victims, who often feel isolated. So I'm looking forward to Victoria Police's response to this issue.

It is a big issue. Family and domestic violence does not just affect one community group; it affects the entire country. It doesn't matter where you were born, Australia or overseas; family violence is absolutely devastating, particularly the murders. One in four women have experienced family violence by an intimate partner from the age of 15, which is an absolute tragedy. When it comes to murders, what has taken place over the years has been absolutely horrific. I think one woman gets murdered every six days. When I spoke previously to the homicide squad in Victoria, I asked if there was a common denominator when it comes to these murders. They said that it is all about control and winning the argument—that the offender is not thinking about jail or consequences; they just must win it at all costs. This is an absolutely awful situation.

I seek leave to table the letter to the Victorian chief commissioner of police, which I mentioned earlier.

Leave granted.

When it comes to our plan, something that the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has been very passionate about is doubling the size of the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation. Child exploitation is such a tragic thing. Again, to go back to my days in the police force, every Monday morning, as a detective, you'd come in to the Boronia criminal investigations branch, and sadly there would be a young person, usually female, who had been abused over the weekend at a sleepover.

The other thing I'm very passionate about is a national child sex disclosure scheme. We did research with Dr Rick Brown from the Australian Institute of Criminology, where we found out that when it comes to recidivist offenders—and I think 1,700 had actually reoffended—those they targeted were, on average, 11-year-old girls. The most interesting and saddest fact was that when a recidivist offender commits their crime it's normally within the timespan of, say, 10 years, during which time the victims may have grown up or the offender has gone interstate and goes to a new area, and then he would swap his target, from, say, male to female. It's predatory behaviour, as described to me by Dr Rick Brown. So that's something I'm very passionate about. I don't know why we still haven't got a national child sex offender register. That's something I'll continue to push hard for. It's so important to do.

Also, we on this side will be extending emergency payments to support women and children fleeing domestic violence, which we established back in 2021, and introducing tougher bail laws for Commonwealth offences.

To finish off, I want to speak about migrant women who may have come from a country where they don't trust law enforcement authorities and who may have language and cultural barriers, face isolation from families and support networks, and have a lack awareness of available services. It is very important for Home Affairs to make sure that when these women arrive in Australia they are provided with this information.

Another thing this side wanted to do was to change the character test, so that if a person who is here on a visa commits family violence then their visa would be revoked and they would be deported. Sadly, the government didn't support that.

The other one I'm very keen on is what I call women's friendship cafes. I remember going to WASEMA, the Women's Association South East Melbourne Australia, where women would come together from multicultural communities to discuss issues of family violence and support. The other thing that is so important when it comes to coercive powers is that the husband will stop his wife from going to a cafe, a restaurant, a gym, or anything else but will allow her to go to the school to drop off the kids, and that's where these cafes are most effective in supporting women.

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think a lot of Australians sometimes think that our political system is broken and that not very much happens in parliament. They get sick of the to-and-fro. We have an adversarial system in our parliament. But I want to say to Australians listening to this debate that, on the issue of gendered violence, the whole parliament does think it is important. From listening to the excellent contributions so far, I think every member of parliament knows that we've got to do better.

We wake too often to a story of another woman having been murdered by someone who said they loved them. Enough is enough is enough. We cannot become immune to this tragedy or shrug our shoulders and say, 'Well, this is the way things are.' Family violence, violence against women and children, does not distinguish between the suburb you live in, what school you went to, how much money you have in the bank account, what ethnicity you are or what part of Australia you live in. The data shows that 2.2 million Australians have experienced physical and/or sexual violence from their partners, and it says that 3.6 million Australians have experience emotional abuse from a partner—and, let's be honest, that's just the people who are willing to say they experienced emotional abuse. Then you've got the kids who have to live with the trauma of abuse. That's a little bit about what I'm going to talk about today.

Men can experience violence like women can. Most blokes are simply not violent, but the research is clear that there's a gendered pattern. Women and their kids are disproportionately, hugely, the victims. Women are much more likely than men to experience sexual and emotional violence from an intimate partner. I'm afraid the numbers don't lie—although I want to move beyond the numbers. It is terrible that one in six of our sisters, mothers, daughters and fellow Australian women have experienced physical or sexual violence from an intimate partner since the age of 15. I think it's about one in 18 men. One in four women have reported experiencing emotional abuse by an intimate partner since the age of 15, and those are the ones who report it.

Gendered violence is not new in this country. We're better at talking about it, and we're better at measuring some of it, but I know that for a lot of our colleagues in the parliament and also, perhaps, a lot of adults listening to parliament today—think back to your school days. There might have been a kid who turned up with bruises they didn't want to talk about. Perhaps there was the weird kid who no-one picked for the team, who would sit in the corner and who didn't seem to have much lunch. Perhaps there were the kids who you would talk to at school but who would make every excuse not to have their friends come to their house. I think the signs have been there for generations, but the awareness and the willingness to go hard against the issue hasn't.

I know that tonight there'll be too many children living in dysfunctional homes. There will be kids tonight who might even come home from secondary school or uni, and their mum will have the light on or off on the porch, and that will be a signal to say if dad is in a good mood or not. Your home shouldn't be where you feel that you've got to walk on eggshells, as if you're negotiating a minefield. I know that tonight there'll be so many households where there'll be mitigation strategies in place to try and appease anger and aggro.

I also understand that some of the men who do these heinous things can be great blokes in the workplace and can be friendly neighbours—street angel, home devil. I get that, for men who perpetrate violence against women, there could be reasons. They could be in the grip of alcoholism—or an alcoholism accelerant—drugs or gambling. Maybe their own childhood was terrible and they didn't have good role models, and that trauma of their childhood just replicates. These things may explain it but they cannot excuse it. They're committing crimes.

What is so difficult, though, is there will be women with a desire to escape violence but overwhelmed by the need to stay. It could be financial. It could be the need to protect the kids. It could be the uncertainty of fear of the change, or it could be they are worried about angering the perpetrator even more.

Bridget Archer (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Federation Chamber will suspend until a later hour.

Sitting suspended from 10:56 to 10:58

(Quorum formed)

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

These men are committing crimes, and women have reasons why they can't flee. We know it's a crisis. Successive governments have started to tackle it. We're investing $925 million over five years. It builds on record measures of the current government to address violence against women: the 10 days paid family and domestic violence leave; the largest increase in rent assistance in 30 years; and investment in crisis accommodation and affordable housing for women.

As the Minister for Government Services, I can't solve the gendered violence crisis, but I'm going to break down the silos within and across government so women who confront questions about whether to stay or go can find their decision easier. I've asked my public servants to work towards the idea of joined-up services, so if a woman is fleeing a violent partner she can have on her card a curated and ready-to-use system, her phone can prove who she is and immediately connect her with a dedicated social worker, she can commence a crisis payment and find suitable accommodation and, if she chooses to apply for an AVO, she can be connected to law enforcement to commence the process. We need to break down the plague of fiefdoms in our Public Service, because if we can have a simple identification which gives a woman the freedom to exercise choice then perhaps we'll save more lives.

I really want to finish my contribution by saying that gendered violence is a man's issue. It is men who, by and large, are the problem. Men learn from the trauma of their own childhood, and some repeat it. It's interesting why men who had abuse in their own childhood turn out to be good fathers and husbands. I think that, if they don't repeat it, it's often because of the influence of strong mothers and other women in their lives.

Young boys tonight will learn about violence. Young girls will learn. But if the young boys who learn about it don't have the right role models—the good men to guide them—then that violence will be intergenerational. We shouldn't kid ourselves. There will be beautiful 12-year-old kids tonight wondering if they will win or lose in their dad's mood lottery. They know their dad's not always a bad fella. He might have undiagnosed depression. He might have had trauma in his childhood. He could just be frustrated that life has turned out the way it has. He could love the drink too much. But that doesn't excuse the violence.

There are kids tonight in Australia who will have too few good memories of their childhood. Perhaps there was one trip to the beach or one attempt to teach them how to ride a bike. Perhaps they'll have the embarrassment of their father falling asleep, drunk, at the school prize night. We know that alcohol is an accelerant of violence. Gambling can be. For goodness sake, sometimes some men even use the excuse of a losing football team. That is weak and pathetic.

Aussie children shouldn't have to develop coping and survival strategies. They shouldn't have to turn up their AirPods louder or put headphones on. They shouldn't have to hope that Dad falls asleep quickly at the table. They shouldn't have to hear their mother fighting to protect them from their father. Children should not have to learn to dissociate the world they live in outside the house and the times that their aggressive father comes home. I know tonight there will be many Australian mothers who will be shields for their children.

We have to educate our young boys to respect women, but we have to break the intergenerational trauma. We must encourage men to examine their own childhoods and deal with the trauma. We've got to also teach people that the toxic masculinity of the Tates, the Rogans and the Petersons of the online world is not the real world. It is alarming in the digital age that 25 per cent of teenage boys look up to social media personalities that perpetuate stupid, old-fashioned, violent attitudes. We're funding a three-year trial to see how we can change this. My colleague Amanda Rishworth has announced the healthy masculinities project trial.

At the end of the day, I'm asking men in Australia to step up. I can't change what happened in your childhood, but you can be the father to your kids that you always deserved but perhaps never had.

Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to rise to speak on stopping gender based violence—or domestic violence, as we know it. The first thing I would like to say is that everyone in this place has the same intention, and that is to rid our society of domestic violence. And this should be bipartisan. The speeches that I've heard today are wonderful speeches with wonderful intentions. I will never criticise anybody across the floor or across parties on this, because we have all tried and we have all failed and we continue to fail, but our intent is there. We want to help. We just need to get the right measures in place. So it is very pleasing, what we did in government in the last few terms and what this government is doing—taking steps in the right direction towards reducing gender based violence, or domestic violence.

I am very privileged to be in this place, but I think I'm even more privileged to have the role of shadow assistant minister for the prevention of family violence. It is something that I am extremely passionate about. I've travelled around Australia, talking to victim advocates, survivor advocates, agencies and police. I have been to every state and territory, in the cities, the regions and the very remote areas, talking to those people who are on the front line or who provide those services. One thing I can say is that every single agency—every single person—is stretched beyond imagination. They are overwhelmed by the amount of domestic violence in their communities, but they're also overwhelmed by the lack of resources.

We see—and credit to the government—$3.4 billion in this budget going towards the national prevention plan, but, of that, 17 per cent is for prevention and intervention, which means that 83 per cent is for response and recovery. That has been described by all the agencies and all the people that I've spoken to as the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. We are not addressing the causal problem. Putting 17 per cent into prevention and intervention is not going to change anything. We are just going to keep going around and around, watching the same things happen over and over again. I am not suggesting for one moment that we should not be funding those crucial agencies and those crucial services. What I'm saying is that we should be matching, dollar for dollar, funding for prevention and intervention and funding for response and recovery, otherwise we'll be standing here in another decade saying that domestic violence is still a blight on our society.

The first step in changing this cycle is funding those agencies and putting the money there for the programs that are required to change society and to change the way we think. It was very pleasing to read the report that came out from the Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner, Micaela Cronin. In the key findings on page 13, the commissioner talks about engaging men:

Men must be a part of every aspect of ending violence. Governments must support efforts to redefine masculinity and engage men effectively. More intervention options for men using or at risk of using violence are needed, which take a trauma-informed approach, improve information sharing and risk assessment and management.

It is really pleasing to hear the change in the conversation and the change in attitude. Men are the problem, but men are also the solution. We have now recognised that reality. As we know, eight out of 10 offences are committed by men. Yes, they may be coming from a place of trauma and, yes, they need to be punished, but there need to be those programs and those supports to change the thinking—not just changing the thinking of male offenders but having those programs out there for men's mental health and wellbeing.

I heard a figure yesterday. In the budget, women's health receives $187 million a year. Men's health? $7 million. Men's health gets $7 million a year, compared with $187 million for women's health. I'm absolutely committed to women's health, and, yes, it should receive the funding. But why is there that disparity for men's health? A healthy male is a healthy father and a healthy member of the community. That just doesn't come down to physical health, but it also comes down to mental health. We know that mental health contributes to this vile situation of domestic violence. We need to change that. We need to fund men's mental health.

I met with Movember last week—and congratulations, again, to the government for their partnership with Movember. It's a great step forward, because they work with men, and they create men's programs to make healthy males. We've heard about young men turning toward social media and toxic masculinity looking for answers. Well, flip the coin, and Movember is there to help our young men, and to help our men be good members of the community. But we also need to put in place a generational curriculum in our education system. It's not just outside. It's not just 'Let's deal with men'. Let's change the way we look at things.

I was privileged to speak with the education minister for Indonesia, Nadiem Makarim. Minister Makarim was a tech billionaire by the time he was 30. He was tapped on the shoulder by the president, who said to him, 'I want you to be my education minister.' What the minister did was put into the national curriculum, alongside maths, English, reading, writing, 'respect and respectful relationships'. It is a holistic program. It's about not just how to treat women, but how to treat each other—how to be a better member of society, and what is expected. Within two short years, not only had incidents of chauvinism and assault decreased significantly, but academic excellence had gone through the roof.

That's what we need to do here. We need to have a national curriculum and education system which incorporates this; not just one day a year. Those programs like Love Bites are fantastic programs, but it has to be like maths and English where you have it a couple of times a week and you get tested on it, just like they do in Indonesia. It also needs to go on a journey from kindergarten through to year 12 with that child. It's irrelevant whether that child is male or female. That's exactly what we need to do. Until we implement those things, change the funding modelling, change the conversation in society, change the education system and bring men into the room, we will continue to go on this roundabout. We will continue with same old, same old since time immemorial.

Again, this is something we should be on the same page on. I am always happy to talk to my counterpart across the floor to work with the government to improve the systems, and, hopefully, in a generation's time we won't be having this conversation.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party, Shadow Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That was a fine contribution from the member for Cowper. As we know, he is the shadow assistant minister for the prevention of family violence and he is working to end the scourge of gender based violence. Having been a police officer, he would have seen far too many sad examples of domestic violence in his line of work. He followed the member for Maribyrnong, a former opposition leader, who also made a sterling speech in this debate. That's actually an ill-named word for this, because it is not a debate. It's a discussion about what we could, should and must do.

Of course, we also heard from the member for La Trobe, who is also very much involved in law enforcement, as well as the member for Boothby. They were all very good contributions. This parliament is always best when we are on the same page. When it comes to combating gender based violence, we certainly are as one. There is much to do, not just at a federal level but indeed at state and local government levels as well. As communities, families and individuals, much more must be done. The incidence of gender based violence, which leads to unspeakable deaths, is just so, so tragic.

Even in my own Riverina electorate, Molly Jean Ticehurst died at the hands of an alleged perpetrator who was a former intimate partner on 22 April this year. She was the loving mother of a little boy, Nate, who will grow up not knowing the love, comfort and support—the unbreakable bond—of a mother and son. He will not have that. That is so, so sad. I know that members of her family and wider circle of friends are seeking a wellness hub for women, which would be a one-stop shop. It's probably another misnomer to call it a shop, but it would be a refuge and somewhere women could go in Forbes, in central-western New South Wales and the Riverina electorate. I know the mayor, Phyllis Miller, who is a marvellous person and has advocated also for a 24/7 policing presence in that town. No-one knows whether that would have avoided the circumstance of tragedy that befell poor Molly.

But I tell you what—at her funeral, it was said that people believed she would one day change the world and move the nation. She shouldn't have had to do it in this way. Many people were so moved by her loss and the grief which poured out at her funeral at that football field. It was immense. It was immeasurable. Premier Chris Minns, who had a tragedy in his own family, having lost his dad just the day before, attended the funeral, and I commend him for the leadership he showed in doing just that. But it's not just Molly, and it's not just this year. This has been going on for too long. After the death of Hannah Clarke, we all remember the scenes in that suburban street in Brisbane, Camp Hill, where Hannah and her three beautiful children, Aaliyah, just six, Laianah, only four, and little Trey, three, all lost their lives. Hannah was only 33. Her life was extinguished by her former husband. Their loss creates grief beyond comprehension. We should turn these tragedies into action nationally and in our own homes and communities to do something about this.

In Wagga Wagga recently, the Wagga Women's Health Centre, which has been operating since the 1970s, had what they called Australia's first men's leadership forum on domestic and family violence. I have to say that, at the rally which followed Molly's passing, held in Wagga Wagga in the Victory Memorial Gardens, the most outstanding speech on that day was by Johanna Elms. There's not much of Johanna; she's a pocket dynamo. She spoke so passionately about what we needed to do to end gender based domestic violence and how we could do it. It was Johanna and her cohort at the Wagga Women's Health Centre who came up with the idea of a men's leadership forum.

Just under 100 men turned up—and it was only men; there were no women—to the Wild Vine at Oura on Friday 26 July. There were no women there at all. We had, as speaker, Adam Blanch, a psychologist for 40 years with a special interest in the fields of trauma, the psychology of interpersonal violence and the psychology of identity. We heard from Rhys Cummins, a Wagga Wagga local and founder of the Murrumbidgee Men's Group. He works for Pathways Murrumbidgee in the drug and alcohol field. He is an exceptional spokesperson for men's mental health in the community.

We also heard from Dave Kramer. Dave is a behavioural scientist dedicated to empowering individuals to create safe, equitable and inclusive homes, workplaces, schools and communities. More importantly, perhaps, he was a friend of Hannah Clarke's. He hardly kept it together as he related stories of Hannah's children, because he was very close to the family. I spoke to him afterwards and told him of my admiration for the work that he is doing. He is making it his lifelong passion to do what he can not only to respect Hannah's memory to a national audience but to make that national audience sit up and listen when he speaks about the need to end gender based domestic violence.

As the member for Cowper said, we can and we must do more. As the member for Maribyrnong quite correctly pointed out, it's up to men to lift their game, do better, and, quite frankly, take ownership of and responsibility for this scourge on society. The women's health centre has put out quotes from the men who attended the forum in Wagga Wagga. Those men said that it was such an eye-opener. They said that people needed to start believing victims. They also said that no community was immune from this, but that, as communities, we all need to make sure we speak up about it.

I can remember that one of my very first jobs when I ran a media agency was to help the women's health centre with the No More Silence Against Domestic Violence campaign. It was as true back then in the early 2000s as it is now. But wouldn't it be wonderful if we had a society where, yes, we could have an open discussion about these issues but that discussion would be all in the past tense? It would be a discussion in which you could say, 'Back then.' But it's not 'back then'; it is now and it is in the future. We must very much lift our game, and it starts with men. We need to talk about mental health. We need to talk about how we can better deal with these situations so that there are no future Molly Ticehursts and Hannah Clarkes, women can live free in the knowledge that they can go for a run or a walk without having to look over their shoulders and worry about whether they're going to be attacked, they can live free in their own homes without coercive control and they can live lives that we men get to enjoy without even having to think about it.

Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday the Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner tabled her inaugural report to parliament, designed to measure progress and impact of the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children. The commissioner warned that the women's safety sector is already buckling under huge pressure and that, when there's an increase in reporting, frontline services need more support to meet increased demand.

We have an epidemic of men's violence against women, and our frontline services are doing the very best they can in a system that continues to tell them to do more with less. For the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children to succeed, it needs to be properly funded. We need to be clear here: the true cost of not funding this plan will be women's safety—their lives and their children's lives. The women's safety sector has said for a decade that it needs $1 billion each year to be able to help everyone who reaches out for help, rather than having to turn people away back to situations of violence. So far, Labor has committed less than two-thirds of this amount. I want the government to recognise the horror that this poor system is inflicting not only on those making the brave decision to flee violence but on the staff who have dedicated their lives to helping the most vulnerable. It's traumatising and it could be avoided if Labor provided the funds required for the national plan to actually succeed.

If Labor continue to ignore the calls for more funding, they risk squandering another decade and more women's lives. Already this year, devastatingly, 45 women have been killed by violence—45. We know this number because of the brave work of volunteer organisation Counting Dead Women Australia and their research through Destroy the Joint. The government doesn't even keep a national family and domestic violence death toll. The Greens have been pushing for years for the government to keep an FDV death toll. We need this important data to aid in awareness raising and prevention; yet this work is being done by volunteers. How many more women have to die for the government to actually do something useful about it? What's the price that women have to pay? For many, sadly, it's the ultimate price.

Here's another cruel fact. First Nations women are 33 times more likely to be hospitalised as a result of violence and six times more likely to be killed; yet we know that First Nations women are overpoliced and undersupported. Our so-called justice system is weaponised against them. They experience systemic racism, victim blaming and very poor police responses. This government needs to do better for our First Nations women and children.

We also know that women on low wages or on income support are especially vulnerable, without the resources to escape violent situations. Yet this government persists with the cruelty of keeping income support payments like JobSeeker below the poverty line and has the audacity to cry poor while dishing out hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts and handouts for the rich.

The housing crisis is felt even more acutely by women and children experiencing family and domestic violence. Women are forced to choose between abuse and homelessness because there's just nowhere for them to go. Let's be clear: our social security system is built on shame and humiliation, demonising those who need these supports. It's absolutely a further barrier for people escaping violence. The government could have solved this if they had worked with the Greens on their housing plan. We can scrap negative gearing and capital gains tax handouts, build more houses and put a freeze and a cap on rents to make housing affordable so that people don't have to choose between abuse and homelessness. They could invest the money they make from scrapping tax handouts to wealthy property developers directly into crisis accommodation or funding the absolutely critical services our frontline workers provide to people escaping violence.

While the Labor government continues to underfund frontline family, domestic and sexual violence services, victims-survivors are turned away from crisis accommodation and one woman is murdered every four days in this country. This issue should be above politics—and we've heard some very fine and heartfelt words from the speakers here today. It is well past time the Albanese government fully funded the organisations that actually do the hard work on the front line of this dreadful epidemic. Anything less is a betrayal to women. The more Labor ignores this crisis the more women will die.