Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Gallagher for her statement about the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Sadly, many people have become numb to the shocking global statistics on violence against women and children. More than a billion women worldwide—or around one in three—have experienced physical or sexual violence. Some of the most shocking forms of abuse include child sexual abuse, child marriage, human trafficking and slavery, and female genital mutilation. Of course, we know that violence around the world isn't perpetrated exclusively against women and girls, but women and girls are overwhelmingly and disproportionately the victims of it. Many proud Australians would like to think of our country as being the envy of the world and much more enlightened. In many respects we are. We are a wealthy, peaceful, democratic country that values freedom and the rule of law. But, when it comes to violence against women and children, this is one area where, to our great shame, we have made far less progress than we should have.

In Australia, one woman is killed by a current or former intimate partner every 10 days. Almost 10 women a day are hospitalised for assault injuries perpetrated by a spouse or domestic partner. Police are called to a domestic or family violence matter every two minutes. One in three women has experienced physical violence and one in five women has experienced sexual violence, from the age of 15. A little over half—53 per cent—of women, have experienced sexual harassment in their lifetime. We all know that the situation is worse for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. For example, in 2018-19, Indigenous women were 29 times as likely as non-Indigenous women to be hospitalised as a result of non-fatal family violence assaults.

Violence against women and/or children is estimated to cost Australia $26 billion a year, but that dollar figure doesn't account for the enormous physical, emotional and psychological costs that victims experience. As has been said, tomorrow is International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women and the theme for this year is 'UNiTE: Activism to end violence against women and girls'. A global campaign of 16 days of activism starts tomorrow and concludes on 10 December, or international Human Rights Day. We cannot underestimate the value and the power of awareness of this issue as just a first step to eliminating violence. Much of the problem of violence against women happens behind closed doors, and so raising awareness helps to bring it out in the open. The Me Too movement has been instrumental in showing the prevalence of sexual assault and sexual harassment. It has empowered victims-survivors to speak out and to show others that they are not alone.

For many years, I worked as an early childhood educator. As one of the co-chairs of Australian Parliamentarians for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, APPCAN, I want to highlight the impact the culture of violence against women and children actually has on children. It manifests in the violence against girls perpetuated by adult men. It manifests in the sexual harassment experienced by girls in school, in sport, in day-to-day living. It manifests in boys who have grown up in a culture of toxic masculinity and who have not learnt how to have healthy, respectful relationships. It manifests in the trauma experienced by children—boys and girls—when they witness family violence at home.

Protecting children from this violence takes on a particular significance, not just because of the vulnerability of children but because of the effects it has on them later in life. If gender based violence is normalised for children, boys who grow to become men will often learn it is acceptable to treat women that way, and girls who grow to become women will not be empowered to escape the violence. Protecting children is key to preventing the violence experienced by and perpetuated against women in adulthood.

I commend the work that has gone into the Australian government's 10-year National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children, released on 17 October this year. This plan is the national policy framework that will guide the government's actions over the next decade to eliminate violence against women and their children. I am proud to be part of a government that has committed $1.7 billion to fighting gender based violence in our recent budget. We heard Senator Gallagher outline some of those initiatives in question time, but government alone cannot fix this problem, so I encourage everyone in the community to work together to end gender based violence. We have to do this because, as we have heard, one death is one death too many.