Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to this debate. I'm just following on from Senator Patrick. I commend Senator Patrick and Senator Griff for being two men participating in this debate today, and I too reflect on the observation of the lack of male voices in this debate. I know this is a constrained amount of time. It is only an hour and lots of people want to speak. I would be more than happy to step aside if there were a male colleague from any side of politics who wanted to participate in this debate today, because I think it is absolutely important that decent men become part of this very-much-needed discussion about how we solve these issues going forward.

We know too many women and their children are at risk and are living in fear right now, today, in their own homes as we pay tribute to and grieve for the loss of life over the last week of Hannah Clarke and her children and, sadly, another woman who was murdered at the hands of her partner only days later in Townsville. Sadly, these statistics should not be shocking, because they are so regular. That is what is wrong here. But when something as grievous and as horrific happens as what occurred last week in Brisbane, there is a glimmer of hope that people were so outraged and so touched by this. I myself felt quite haunted by it. I couldn't shake, for two days, the stories, the reports and the images that I had seen. I could not stop thinking about Hannah and those children. I had never met this family. I know nothing about them apart from what I've read since this tragic event, but it shook me deeply—and I think many, many Australians feel the same. That's why we're discussing this today.

But we have to use that grief, that anger and that frustration to call for genuine and real action. As my colleagues Senator Waters and Senator Siewert have mentioned today, at the very least we should be able to commit, from a funding perspective, that no woman is ever turned away when she asks for help. When she is in danger, she should be able to get a safe place for her to sleep and a safe place for her children to be. There should be somebody at the end of the phone when a woman calls in desperate need of assistance. The fact that there is not is a national shame.

The fact that this issue is now at such an epidemic rate that one woman is killed a week is not okay. It is 2020 in modern Australia, where equality is meant to be part of the norm, where young girls are brought up believing they can be anything, that they are equal. To see the reports of mothers and their children being murdered at the hands of the very people who are meant to love and protect them, I can tell you that equality still has a long way to go. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.