Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this morning, with the rest of Australia, reeling at the news that in 2015 we have lost the lives of 62 women—62 women killed by someone they once loved and someone who claimed to have loved them. We in this parliament must do all we can to create a country where women and children are safe in their homes and in the community.

I stand today to recommit personally to that end, and I applaud the work of the Victorian Minister for Women, Fiona Richardson, and Premier Daniel Andrews in conducting the Royal Commission into Family Violence. This finished its first hearings in August and we are set for final hearings in October. I join Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk in calling for immediate and national action and a national response, because, as former Governor-General Quentin Bryce said, 'This is a wake-up call not just for Queensland but for the nation.' We need an immediate national response. I note Bill Shorten and Labor called for a national round table in 2014 and called for it again this weekend. They will be writing to the Prime Minister this week asking for that round table to occur.

I am left asking why the Prime Minister has not acted. We all heard his response on the weekend:

Any man who raises his hand to woman is weak and gutless

I do not think anyone disagrees with that sentiment but it is an inadequate response. I suggest our Prime Minister—our self-appointed Minister for Women—is perhaps ignorant of the causes. Violence against women and children is about power and control. The cause is known and has been long identified internationally: it is unequal distribution of power and resources between men and women. The cure is promoting equal and respectful relationships between men and women. The cure is gender equity.

I call on the Prime Minister to symbolically and practically address this. He can begin with a public apology for standing in front of cameras surrounded by sexist-slur placards against our first female Prime Minister. He needs to address gender representation in his own party and his own cabinet. He can reinstate funding for front-line services into this terrible scourge in our community, and he needs to join Bill Shorten and Labor. He needs to call the round table and then he needs to listen, and listen carefully, to the advice of the experts. He needs to hear and he needs to heed. Our Prime Minister needs to act now, Deputy Speaker, before more women's lives are lost and children's lives impacted terribly.