Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to pay tribute to and remember the five South Australian women who were murdered at the hands of a partner in the last month, and all of those other women murdered before them. The scourge of domestic violence in this country is out of control. We need to do everything we possibly can. We talk about this a lot, but I just want to share a story.

Fourteen years ago, one of my son's best mates experienced a situation where he witnessed his father stab his mother to death in the kitchen. It was an act that devastated his life and devastated the life of his younger sister, who was still in primary school at the time. Those children's lives were destroyed. They lost their loving mother, and their father was put in prison for life for her murder. Due to that, they had to leave their school because they had to go and live with elderly relatives a long way away. They couldn't maintain their relationships with their school friends, who they'd grown up with since preschool; they couldn't continue their education with the teachers they knew; and they couldn't stay connected to the community that loved them. Those lives were shattered.

I think to myself, 'Was there something I could have done? Was there something that I should have noticed?' I was not friends with his mother, but we certainly passed each other at school pick-ups. She was always withdrawn. Should I have said something? Should I have reached out? As a society we need to question ourselves every single day and stop domestic violence in Australia.