November 2023 E-Newsletters

Topic : Domestic and Family Violence

I have met constituents including mothers and their children who have fled violent relationships seeking justice and peace. How we as a community and country respond, determines whether we make a bad problem worse, whether lives stabilise or spiral out of control. In Australia, one in three women has experienced physical violence since the age of 15, and one in five has experienced sexual violence. Intimate partner homicide is the most prevalent homicide type in Australia with on average, one woman killed by an intimate partner every 10 days. In the last 3 weeks, we have seen at least 6 women die in Australia- teacher Lily James and Bendigo resident, Logee Osias, a mother of two are some. 

I recently attended the opening of a women’s refuge in Higgins by the Lighthouse Foundation, a non-profit that provides supportive care for highly traumatised children and young adults. In a remarkable act of kindness, Caulfield Grammar School provided a residential property for use. Homes that are set up in strong communities like ours allows clients to access critical infrastructure like government services, health services, employment and educational opportunities, but victim survivors also benefit from living in a stable, safe and productive community. In short, the environment itself has a therapeutic effect.  

The impacts of violence ripple out. For women, domestic and family violence affects their social and economic participation. It results in a disrupted work history which risks entrenchment of part-time or casual work leading to lower income, fewer assets and less super. Is it any surprise then, that family and domestic violence is the leading driver of homelessness for women and children? Family violence can have a profound impact on a child’s life. It can result in post-traumatic stress disorder, affect behaviour, relationship formation and education. In short, it can completely derail a child’s trajectory. Violence against women and children also costs the economy $26 billion each year, with victim-survivors bearing approximately half that cost. 

The Albanese Government’s National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2023 commits us to sustained whole of society action towards ending violence against women and children in one generation.  

The core principles of the National Plan are: 

• Achieving gender equality, as gender inequality drives violence against women and children.

• Ensuring the lived experiences of victim-survivors inform policy.

• Partnering with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities to reinforce and support efforts to close the gap.

• Building a person-centred service system that is well integrated.

• Taking an intersectional approach because disadvantage is layered based on gender, ethnicity, status, sexuality, disability and other attributes.

• Increasing accountability for people who perpetrate violence. 

The National Plan will be implemented through two 5-year Action Plans, as well as a standalone First Nations National Plan. These efforts will be reinforced by the National Strategy to achieve Gender Equality. 

“This acknowledges that domestic violence affects people's cognition—their ability to think, to perform and to be productive. It destabilises them, but it should not result in termination of employment at a time when people need support."

• Being late or not coming to work. 

• Having trouble concentrating. 

• Making uncharacteristic mistakes.

• Changes to the quality or quantity of their work.  

• Changes to their dress or makeup to hide injuries.  

• Unconvincing explanations for how the injuries occurred. 

• Showing signs of emotional distress, such as: unusual quietness, isolation from coworkers, emotional and upset during or following contact with their partner and jumpiness or fearfulness. 
• Receiving an unusual number of emails, texts or phone calls. 

• An abrupt change of address. 

• Unwelcome visits or frequent visits to the workplace by their partner. 

• They have a strong negative reaction if their partner visits the workplace. 

• Limited access to money.

• Restrictions on where or when they can travel or work, or who they can connect with (e.g., they are not able to attend events after hours or take part in social activities with work colleagues).  

““I think it's really important that employers are alive to these clues and, also, are prepared to have difficult conversations. These are conversations that I had to have thousands of times in my career. The first advice I'd give you is to be prepared. Understand what your obligations are, hence circle back to those resources, particularly the ones I mentioned. Make sure these conversations are treated confidentially and keep repeating that. Create a private space to have these conversations and do them in person. Why? These sorts of conversations are not done online or over the phone because you miss those paraverbal clues that convey probably more than the language itself. Also, when a victim is facing another person through a screen, they have to maintain eye contact and gaze, and that in itself can be quite traumatising for victims, who may want to turn away or withdraw every now and then. It's just not conducive to having these difficult conversations."

- Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah MP, speech to Australian Parliament House, 9 August 2023 

Tackling gender based violence demands a whole of society approach addressing every stage in the lifetime continuum:  
 

To better support children, the Albanese Government is developing an Early Years Strategy Early Years Strategy | Department of Social Services, Australian Government (dss.gov.au) to take a more integrated approach underscoring how foundational the early years are to leading a productive life. I hosted an Early Years roundtable with experts in the field with Minister Amanda Rishworth last year which contributed to this strategy.   

We have established Youth Advisory Groups within our newly established Office for Youth under Minister Ann Aly, where Australians aged 16 to 25 years are encouraged to shape federal policy. There are 5 advisory groups: Creative Industries, Civic Engagement, Prevention of Gender-Based Violence, Employment, and First Nations Education. The young people involved partner with government departments to develop policies and programs that are important to young people and have a voice in matters that affect them. I invite my young constituents to apply for the 2024 intake here.

A modern workplace means implementing all recommendations from the Respect@Work Report. We passed legislation last year that introduced a positive duty on employers to take measures to eliminate sex discrimination and sexual harassment and provided the Australian Human Rights Commission with new functions to ensure compliance with this positive duty. 
 

Evidence clearly shows that there is a strong link between harmful forms of masculinity and the perpetration of gender-based violence. We recently announced $3.5 million towards the healthy masculinities project trial. We want to understand how best to counteract the onslaught of negative social media messaging targeting young men and boys. The most effective measures will be delivered through sporting clubs or community organisations, or digitally on social media platforms. Breaking the nexus between unhealthy masculinity and perpetration of violence against women means tackling the drivers like social media from an early age. 
 

Victim survivors have consistently disclosed how interaction with the justice system exacerbates their trauma. This is one reason, we are investing $14.7 million into criminal justice reform, to improve the way the criminal justice system responds to sexual assault. This includes establishing an Australian Law Reform Commission inquiry into law reform and investing $8.2 million towards small-scale trials of primary prevention and early intervention in a national first. These trials will build an evidence base to guide future initiatives and funding.  
 

In addition, the Attorney General is bringing together the states and territories to tackle coercive control. In September, the Standing Council of Attorneys-General released the National Principles to address coercive control in family and domestic violence, in order to create the basis of a shared national understanding and put this issue on the map.  
 

Economic equality is core to gender equality. We have invested $5 billion to deliver cheaper childcare that is benefiting 96% of Australian families, delivered the biggest boost to parental leave since it was introduced by the Gillard Government in 2011, and invested $1.7 billion for women’s safety initiatives. We are closing loopholes in work like banning pay secrecy clauses, increasing the minimum wage, enforcing gender pay gap reporting for business, dialing down casualisation, criminalising wage theft and we established the Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce to advise Government. Under this flurry of activity, we have seen the national gender pay gap drop from 13.3% to 13%-the lowest level in Commonwealth history.