Alice Jordan-Baird (Gorton, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

I'd like to take this opportunity today to raise a really serious matter and one of really high importance. Last week, I met with the homicide at home project team at Melbourne university. This is a team of people who have brought together researchers, people with lived experiences, practitioners and advocates to create real-world change in policy, practice and community support, change for children and young people bereaved by domestic homicide. I'd like to commend their work on their research report Children and young people bereaved by domestic homicide:a focus on Australia. I'd also like to commend their collection of stories published in their book Life After Intimate Partner Homicide, as well as their children's book, What Ally Needs Now, by Andrea Baldwin, Thu Huong Nguyen and the researchers and people with lived experience.

I'll share with you a little bit about Ally's story now. Ally is a rhino beetle, because they're the strongest beetle in the world. When she was younger, something terrible happened in her family. Ally was a victim-survivor of domestic homicide. Many people tried to help her, but she still felt misunderstood until she found a group of people with similar experiences to her. In my own life, I've heard of grief as a suitcase. You lug it around, and over time it becomes a smaller bag until it's a little bit lighter—a little handbag you carry with you. Ally the rhino beetle learns about grief like it's a marble in a jar. As Ally grows, she'll find that the marble stays the same but that the jar gets bigger. Ally's friends tell her:

Your life is like the jar getting bigger as you learn and change and grow. In time there will be so much more in your life it will be easier to live with the marble.

This children's book was created to help children like Beverley Attard. Today, Bev is a highly regarded social worker in my electorate of Gorton. Over 30 years ago, when Bev was just 11 years old, she was witness to her mother's murder, a crime perpetrated by her father. Beverley shared parts of her story in this book by the Beetle Collective. She shared thoughts and feelings that dominated her childhood and shaped the person she is today. Beverley shared:

I was provided counselling, but didn't find any meaning out of it. 'Write a journal about your feelings.' I don't even like doing that now. There was nothing child-focused about it.

What Beverley is describing here is something the research team at homicide at home have identified—that the children of the most extreme cases of domestic violence, such as homicide, are the ones who are often left with the least support.

But Beverley is not alone in her story. In the two decades leading up to 2020, in Australia a total of 1,210 people were killed by a current or former intimate partner. This is a national crisis. I'm proud that the Albanese Labor government is taking really important steps to address violence against women. Since 2022, we have invested $4.4 billion to deliver the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children, the most of any government ever. This consultation is now underway, closing 31 July. We've introduced the Leaving Violence Program support; added hundreds of frontline workers to the domestic, family and sexual violence sector across the country; and we've provided nearly $1 billion to the states and territories for service delivery.

But what the research team at homicide at home have identified are the gaps. When a child loses a parent at the hands of domestic homicide, they're often experiencing multiple losses at once—one parent is deceased, while the offender, who is often the other parent, is detained, is on the run or has died by suicide. The home is no longer a home; it's a crime scene, and children are left behind with no clear advocate. Usually, the people caring for them are dealing with their own intense grief, and these kids are often navigating multiple losses and incredibly complex trauma, often while having to move away from home or change schools, even more disruptions to their daily routines.

At a really basic level, these children often fall through the cracks. That's why sharing these stories is so incredibly important. Beverley's story, along with the others bravely told in these books, rebel against the silence and the stigma that are often put on those bereaved due to intimate partner homicide. These stories are real, they are alive and they are carried by children into adulthood, shaping their experiences forever. They deserve to be told, and they expose gaps in our social welfare systems which deserve addressing.

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