Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister representing the Prime Minister (Senator Farrell) to a question without notice I asked today relating to domestic and family violence.

I asked about the tragic number of women killed by violence—women murdered. We know the rates are atrocious, but the last month has seen those rates absolutely skyrocket. I asked the minister representing the Prime Minister: What's being done to tackle this national crisis? Will the government put this on the National Cabinet agenda, where I think it belongs, to give it that national focus and to work together with the states and territories to bring the national might and coordinating ability to better tackle these horrific rates of murder? I didn't get a 'no', so I take heart from that. I'm not sure Minister Farrell has the authority to schedule a National Cabinet meeting, but I do take heart from his statement that the government will look at any measures that might reduce violence against women.

That's positive, because I also mentioned that it's quite hard to track how many women have been murdered. At the moment we've got volunteer organisations doing that work. Now, bless their hearts for doing it, and I acknowledge the huge amount of trauma that they sustain in so doing. But this is an important issue. We should not be leaving the count of how many women are killed by violence to volunteer organisations. We need the government to be the source of this data. We need clear criteria on which that data is compiled, and, much like we do with the road toll to try to deter people from speeding, it's my belief that if we had a national toll of women killed by violence it would help with that prevention and that culture change.

So I asked the minister whether or not the government would consider that and, again, he said they're going to look at any measures that might reduce violence against women. I welcome that still being on the table, and I certainly hope that the minister kicks it up the line for the Prime Minister to turn his mind to seriously.

I also challenged the minister on the very disappointing funding commitment from this government. Yes, it's an increase on the funding from the previous government, but it's still about half of what the frontline support services have been calling for so that they can meet demand for people who are seeking support in fleeing violence. Whether that's legal support, counselling, emergency housing or long-term housing, the sector has been saying for some time now that they need about $1 billion every year simply to meet the current demand for their support for women fleeing violence. They're predicting that demand will increase, and yet they don't even have half of what they need with the current demand. So I challenged the minister: what is the reason for underfunding these services that are helping keep women alive? When we've seen such a jump in the numbers of women murdered just last month, why are you not increasing the amount to these crucial frontline support services? You're spending money on nuclear submarines. You're spending money on tax cuts for the wealthy—mostly men. Why can't you fund these frontline domestic violence, and family and sexual violence support services? The minister didn't really engage with that question of why they aren't. He simply reported back to me the figures that they are committing. But in May estimates this year, the department confirmed that in fact it's only about half of what the sector has been asking for. The minister was unable to commit any extra funding like the government really should.

The last part of my question was directed towards the cultural change that's so desperately needed to stop this epidemic of murder and violence against women. I note the comments made by the former principal of the school where Lilie James was murdered in the last few weeks. That former principal wrote this glowing diatribe about the murderer, saying that the guy was an absolute delight. It's not the first time that we see the media or people in society somehow say: 'Oh, this was a great bloke. He must've just—something snapped.' What we really need to do is understand what is driving this behaviour. There's a lot of literature that says that it's firmly entrenched gender inequality, and power and privilege that are playing into the expressions of violence that lead to these statistics of 46 women this year having been killed by a partner or former partner. Many of the organisations are calling for a national perpetration study to better target the cultural change work. There is some good cultural change work going on, but it's clearly not enough because the numbers are not coming down. So I'm passing on that desire by the sector to have a national perpetration study. This would also, correctly, shift the focus off victims-survivors and onto the perpetrators, where it belongs. This is an issue for men to step up and solve. We need men to call out the sexism and misogyny that are driving these murders of women and their children. I invite the government to do that.

Question agreed to.