Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the member for Gellibrand for putting this matter on our agenda, and I thank all those who have spoken on this debate. Like my friend the member for Leichhardt and before him the member for Werriwa, I pledge to stand up and speak out against violence against women and children.

It is really important that every man in this country understands their obligation as men—as men!—to stand up and speak out against violence against women and children. It is not acceptable under any circumstances: we know it and we need to make sure that every man in Australia knows it, understands it and does something about it. We must take responsibility.

I am proud to be a White Ribbon advocate and a major supporter of grassroots campaigns in my electorate. Men speaking to other men about violence against women is a powerful catalyst for change, and it is men I want to talk about here today—men in my own electorate who are making a difference in terms of accepting their responsibility to speak out. But we cannot escape the facts. In the Northern Territory a third of police time is spent dealing with domestic violence, and Aboriginal women are victims in 70 per cent of all cases. As of June 2016, 83 per cent of reported assaults in Katherine were associated with domestic violence. In Tennant Creek it was 67 per cent and in Alice Springs it was 56 per cent. These figures are deplorable. In my electorate of Lingiari, domestic violence is, sadly, an experience too familiar for too many. It is so sad.

In September last year, a renounced White Ribbon ambassador, the then-CLP Attorney-General John Elferink, said in parliament that he was tempted to figuratively slap opposing Labor MP Natasha Fyles. What a thing to be said by a person who is supposed to be an Attorney-General responsible for justice and looking after the community. In my electorate, there will be three White Ribbon marches calling out exactly the behaviour exhibited by Mr Elferink—in Darwin, Katherine and my hometown of Alice Springs, as well as communities across the rest of the Northern Territory. As part of White Ribbon Week on Thursday in Yuendumu there is a community songwriting competition to say no to violence.

I want to refer now to the 'No More' campaign. The 'No More' campaign started in 2006 with the principal advocate being Mr Charlie King, a very great and a very good Australian, a great man for standing up against violence and abuse within families against children. The momentum for this came about because Aboriginal men in the Northern Territory were saying they wanted their voices to be heard in consultations about family issues, including family violence. I want to commend men like Johnny Liddle in Alice Springs at the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress, who was at the forefront of organising marches in Alice Springs, seminars and camps around issues to do with family violence and violence against women, attracting people from across Australia. I want to commend the people in Katherine. I participated some years ago in marching up the Stuart Highway, blocking the Stuart Highway, talking about violence against women.

These are important initiatives, and it is wrong to think, as some people would have us believe, that all Aboriginal men are violent towards their spouses or partners, or women and children generally. That is not the case. There are many great champions; Charlie King and Johnny Liddle are but two. It is important that we take the message of Charlie King's 'No More' campaign and do link arms together to say that we are fed up; it is not going to happen. We will not accept that it is an appropriate way to deal with women, or differences between men and women and children. It is just not acceptable.

We need to say we support and recognise the things that are being done by AFL teams and rugby league teams across this country, who are saying that, if you have been found guilty of an offence involving family violence, you cannot play our game. That is important: a great disincentive for people to be involved in family violence. It develops advocacy around family violence and teaches young men about their responsibilities towards women and children in their communities, but we also need to understand the importance of addressing the needs of the victims.

I know that men, like me and I am sure like every other man in this parliament, believe we need to make sure services designed to address the needs of the victims of family violence are properly funded. To that end I want to talk about KWILS, the Katherine Women's Information and Legal Service, and CAWLS, the Central Australian Women's Legal Service. These organisations are dealing with the victims of family violence. These organisations need support that they are currently not getting from the federal government. I say to the federal government: use this opportunity of this week to understand that it is our mutual responsibility to support these women and advocate against family violence, particularly violence against women.

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