Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thanks to the hard work of advocates and service providers over a period of decades, the message is slowly starting to get out about men's violence against women. There is a growing recognition of the scale of this problem in our community and a growing appreciation that the root cause of this violence is gender inequality. There are men who believe that they are entitled to exercise power and control over the women in their lives and that society will let them get away with it.

However, as our society changes, the ways in which men can perpetuate this power and control changes too. Last week, a Senate inquiry into family violence heard evidence of how men are increasingly using technology to terrorise and control the women around them. WESNET, the Women's Services Network, told the committee how applications developed to help owners find lost phones can be used by abusive partners and ex-partners to track and target women. WESNET has also spoken about the ease with which men can acquire computer programs that can illegally access women's email accounts, spoof mobile phone numbers and even distort the voices of telephone callers. WESNET has responded to this by producing simple information for women on how best to protect themselves from online monitoring, stalking and harassment by partners and ex-partners. Their guides explain how these technologies work and how women can keep their movements anonymous using simple, preventative measures. It is a way to empower victimised women so that they can exercise control over their digital lives. I applaud WESNET for such an important initiative.

But guides such as these can only go so far in protecting the women suffering from harassment and violence in our community. We need to see more action from government in this space to hold men accountable for this kind of behaviour and to empower women to take action on their own part. The lack of government action in response to the use of technology to threaten and stalk women contrasts with this government's actions to establish a children's e-safety commissioner to take down material posted to social media sites that bullies children and its proposals to block websites making available material that infringes copyright. These online safety and enforcement proposals obviously stand alone, separate to the use of technology to threaten and control women. However, the significantly higher profile that these issues attract in this place says something about our priorities as parliamentarians.

Given that gender inequality is the root cause of men's violence against women, as recognised in the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children 2010-2022 in the Second Action Plan launched by this government this year, we need to start taking seriously the often toxic misogyny that women are frequently subjected to online. In our politics, our policymaking and our policing we need to start paying more attention to the growing use of technology by men to threaten and control the women in their lives. I hope that WESNET 's informed contribution to the Senate inquiry into family violence helps start this conversation, and I hope that today's launch of the Parliamentarians Against Family Violence group helps continue this important message.