A woman is still being killed each week in Australia. We need federal leadership - The Guardian - Kate Fitz-Gibbon and Marie Segrave - 1 Mar 2021
Is it that the government has accepted that violence against women is an inevitable part of Australia’s way of life?
‘The past week has exposed the ways in which violence against women is present in every corner of the Australian community. Whether it be in the home or in the workplace, Australian women experience a range of forms of violence at significant rates.'
Last week Queensland woman, Doreen Langham, died in an apparent domestic violence tragedy. A body believed to be hers was found in a burnt-out home, alongside that of her ex-partner, hours after she called police for help. She had previously obtained a domestic violence order against the former partner.
In the same week, another woman was killed at home and her husband charged with her murder.
We are eight weeks into 2021. Again, our country is on track for at least one woman to be killed each week.
According to Destroy the Joint, 55 women were violently killed in Australia in 2020, counting both domestic and non-domestic settings. These deaths are the tip of the iceberg of domestic and family violence in Australia. For the most part, it is women and children across the country being subjected to violence and abuse that impacts every aspect of their lives.
Consistently, the Commonwealth government is largely silent on the biggest threat to Australian women’s wellbeing, safety and security. Despite repeated accounts of violence against women at all levels over the last fortnight, we have heard nothing from Australia’s minister for women. Where is the national leadership?
In recent years, we have seen state government leadership and commitment to addressing family violence: from the 2015 Not Now Not Ever inquiry in Queensland, to the 2016 Victorian royal commission into family violence, and more recently the New South Wales government’s inquiry into coercive control.
Is it that the commonwealth government has accepted that violence against women is an inevitable part of Australia’s way of life?
Is it that our prime minister needs a reminder that these women are someone’s daughters?
The past week has exposed the ways in which violence against women is present in every corner of the Australian community. Whether it be in the home or in the workplace, Australian women experience a range of forms of violence at significant rates.
The accounts of workplace sexual assault and harassment which have emerged following media reporting of Brittany Higgins’s allegations are shocking, but they should not surprise us. They reflect the findings of the Australian Human Rights Commission’s 2020 National Inquiry into Sexual Harassment in the Workplace. That inquiry described progress towards tackling sexual harassment in Australian workplaces as “disappointingly slow” and found that Australia lags behind many other countries in preventing and responding to sexual harassment. Australia has yet to implement the 55 recommendations.
Appearing before the NSW Inquiry into Coercive Control last week, Our Watch – the national body mandated to drive the primary prevention of violence against women and their children – recommended a whole of system approach to tackling this form of domestic and family violence. They emphasised the importance of government coordination, cross-sectoral collaboration and the need to commit to resourcing and implementing the evidence-based strategies needed for “deeper and lasting change”.
The clear issue is the absence of national leadership. The Office for Women, and the minister for women, are not leading a significant and urgent national overhaul of how we respond to and better prevent all forms of violence against women.
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What they are leading is the development of the next stage of the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children. The National Plan was established a decade ago, and heralded as leading the way towards reducing violence. Yet we remain as we were in 2011: mourning the deaths of women at least once a week.
As we approach International Women’s Day we demand action. What is required of the government to demonstrate national leadership on this issue?
It should immediately establish a national taskforce, jointly led by the prime minister and the minister for women, with state and territory leaders and experts (including victim-survivor advocates). This taskforce should start by immediately attending to six key areas of action:
· Create national consistency in legal definitions of all forms of domestic and family violence;
· Review all relevant and outstanding recommendations made at the national and state level in recent years to inform the development of a national roadmap for reform;
· Establish a shared national/state and territory funding model to ensure victim-survivors have immediate access to the funds and services they need to be safe;
· Fund a shared national/state and territory practice model for perpetrator interventions based on best practice knowledge and emerging innovations;
· Establish agreement across states and territories to have a significant proportion of police dedicated to policing domestic and family violence, with ongoing support, specialist training and pathways for career advancement;
· Commit to monthly communication on progress through the establishment of a national monitoring program on domestic and family violence. The program should inform reviews of reform activity, prevalence trends and to identify key areas for action.
Ideally the leadership of this taskforce will contribute to a future where these numbers reduce. But for now, the numbers are stubbornly stable and action is urgently required.
Moving quickly to work together nationally is achievable: Covid-19 demonstrated how our arms of government can move with unity to address an urgent threat. The biggest challenge we currently face, though, is the will of our national leadership.
Associate professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon is director of the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre. Associate professor Marie Segrave is key researcher in the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre
This article was amended on 16 July 2021. An earlier version said that data collected by Destroy the Joint showed that 55 women in 2020 were killed by “a male intimate partner”, and referred specifically to “a domestic setting”. This figure of 55 is actually the total number of women who were violently killed in both domestic and non-domestic settings, and not just by men or by their partners. The text has been changed to correct this.