Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. On average, in Australia every week one woman is killed by their partner or ex-partner. This is a national crisis. Will the Prime Minister join with me to support legislating for five days' paid domestic violence leave into the National Employment Standards?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question, and I thank him also for making our commitment to stop violence against women and children a national, totally bipartisan, priority. It is absolutely critical that all men—as fathers, as grandfathers, as teachers, as employers, as members of parliament, as prime ministers and as alternative prime ministers, like the Leader of the Opposition—that all of us make it absolutely clear that violence against women and children must stop. And all of us must recognise that, while disrespecting women does not always result in violence against women, all violence against women begins with disrespecting women. This is, at heart, an issue where there needs to be cultural change.

We know of the deaths that the honourable member spoke about a moment ago—well understood, well mourned. The member for Corangamite last night spoke in this House, movingly, of another death; another shocking case of a woman—a friend of hers—killed by her husband. Yesterday I met with Dr Ann O'Neill, who is a truly inspirational survivor of domestic violence. Her estranged husband broke into her home, shot her, and killed her two children before turning the gun on himself. Ann was the only survivor. And yet, she says that the most common question she was asked after that tragedy was: 'What did you do to make him do that?' The victim of the most horrific crime was blamed.

We pay tribute to all of the victims of domestic violence, like Ann, past and present, who have borne the brunt of our failure to act for too long. Violence against women and children is one of the great shames of our nation.

Mr Speaker, the honourable member has asked me about his proposal to have five days' paid domestic violence leave if elected. I thank the honourable member for the proposal. We will consider it very carefully. It is a complicated issue, as indeed the member for Sydney acknowledged earlier in the year. It is important that individual businesses are able to deal with this in a way that works both for themselves and for their female employees. But we will certainly take it on board. As you know, Mr Speaker, the government has engaged the Productivity Commission to review the Fair Work laws. I understand that, as part of the process, the commission has received several submissions that will raise the issue of domestic violence. We look forward to its report. I thank the Leader of the Opposition for the suggestion; we certainly will consider it, as indeed will the Productivity Commission.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Social Services. Will the minister inform the House of the steps that the government has taken to reduce violence against women and children?

Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question. As the Prime Minister noted, we had the great privilege of listening to a very fine speech by Dr Ann O'Neill earlier in this week, in an event that was allied to White Ribbon week. The Prime Minister noted the question that Ann O'Neill stated she was most often asked—after events of such unimaginable horror, and after which she was very badly injured and survived. But, having lost two children to a murder at the hands of her partner who then committed suicide, to get asked that question—what was it that had happened; what was it that she had done that had brought about that response—is nearly unimaginable. And those incidents that happened to Ann O'Neill—who must actually be one of the bravest Australians I have ever met—were not that long ago. Attitudes have improved, I think, and somewhat substantially.

In addition to announcements that this government has made around the $100 million funding package, on the specific issue of domestic violence and with respect to some very specific, on-the-ground, coalface service-delivery issues, a very important paper was released today. The research paper is entitled Reducing violence against women and their children. I might just note here that Senator Michaelia Cash, the Minister for Women, was a significant driving force behind the commissioning and conduct of this research. It essentially involves qualitative research, amongst other types of research, where focus groups were put questions about scenarios that involved fairly low but not insignificant levels of violence, and then the responses from the groups—and they involved parents and young children; and some of the scenarios involved young children—were interrogated to try and work out what was going on. Fascinatingly, and very unhappily, they mirror in a way precisely that question that Ann O'Neill said that she was most often asked.

The report in essence describes three responses. The first is that there is a very deep underappreciation of what constitutes unacceptable, violating or intimidatory conduct towards a woman or a girl. The second is that there is a consistent minimisation of violence and aggressive behaviour. The third is that there is a very deep passive acceptance of conduct that should simply never happen. I recall something said by a colleague from a previous professional life at the DPP. You would have heard of the term 'passive aggressive'. He described very many men who are perpetrators in these circumstances as 'passive dismissive' about the level of violence in which they have engaged.

This report will help us commission $30 million worth of an awareness campaign because it goes to the very long-term root issue about a very strange masculine permissiveness towards violence. When that violence is permitted at low levels, it grows, unhappily, at high levels.