Pat Conaghan (Cowper, National Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I commend the member for Bonner for raising this motion, and I agree wholeheartedly with all of her comments. I would firstly like to acknowledge the strength and courage of all the victims-survivors: no-one can understand what you've been through. It doesn't matter whether they're a police officer, a counsellor, an adviser—they haven't been through what you've been through. I'd also like to acknowledge and remember all those victims who did not survive.

As a former police officer, detective, prosecutor and then lawyer for 18 years, and having done a lot of pro bono work for women's refuges, I understand. I can never completely understand what victims-survivors have been through, but is so important and so incumbent upon government on both sides. We do work together on this because this is above politics. It has to be bipartisan, and I commend the government in its budget for continuing the good work that the coalition did over its last three terms, acknowledging that we have so much more to do—so much more.

I was privileged in the last term to be the shadow assistant minister for the prevention of family violence. I took that role extremely seriously, and I travelled the breadth of Australia. I went to every single state and territory on a number of occasions. I met with advocates, with survivors, with men's groups—across the board—and the message was the same: unless the funding model changed and unless certain things took place, they would always be the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. What they meant by that was that we need to concentrate more on prevention and intervention, as opposed to response and recovery.

I'm not suggesting in any way that we defund response and recovery. That needs to be paramount as well. But during the last term the total of the funding for prevention and intervention amounted to 17 per cent. If we know what the root cause is, then we need to fund that. We develop policy that concentrated predominantly on prevention and intervention, because you see statistics like: as of December 2025, 3,565 people in New South Wales prisons had domestic and family violence offences recorded against them. That increased 39 per cent over five years. Despite 34,000 men receiving an apprehended domestic violence order each year, there are only 900 men's behavioural change program places funded each year across the state. That is a broken system.

What we need and what we should be working to is, firstly, increasing funding dollar for dollar for the delivery of prevention and intervention services versus response and recovery funding. We need to develop a nationally accredited men's behaviour change program. We know that men are the problem, but men are also the answer. Healthy men are good men and become active men in society, and women want men to be healthy both mentally and physically. We need to develop a national accreditation pathway for people facilitating men's behavioural change. It needs to be a profession. We need to establish a national workforce strategy to address family and domestic violence. Most importantly, we need to incorporate accredited respectful relationships education into the national curriculum from kindergarten to year 12. Hopefully, that will take the step in the right direction.

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