Kara Cook (Bonner, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tomorrow is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, and it also marks the start of the 16 days of activism against gender-based violence. Labor stands with the millions of women and children whose lives have been shaped by fear, coercion and abuse. Ending gender-based violence is not aspirational; it is urgent, it is necessary and it is achievable.

Before entering parliament, I spent my career working with victims-survivors as a domestic violence lawyer, as a founder of Australia's first dedicated domestic violence law firm, as the CEO of Basic Rights Queensland and as principal lawyer at Women's Legal Service Queensland. I've sat in court where I have seen 90 domestic violence matters a day, I've seen the intergenerational impact of abuse and I've supported women navigating complex systems at the very moment their lives were at risk. I bring their voices into my work every day, but especially during these 16 days of global advocacy.

The Albanese Labor government has delivered the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and their Children, a blueprint to end violence in one generation. Labor has backed this plan with over $4 billion for prevention services, housing and long-term change. We've legislated 10 days of paid domestic violence leave; invested $1 billion in crisis and transitional housing, including 24 new homes in my electorate of Bonner, in Wynnum Manly and Mount Gravatt; we've made the leaving violence payment permanent, giving women escaping abuse up to $5,000; and we've acted to prevent government debts being weaponised, because financial abuse affects 43 Australian women every hour. That is what systemic change looks like.

But today I want to talk about one of the most dangerous and least understood forms of gender-based violence: non-fatal strangulation. It is not a minor assault. It is not a moment of loss of control. It is a red-flag predictor of homicide. When a woman is strangled by a partner, even once, her risk of later being killed by him increases by up to 800 per cent. Yet strangulation often leaves no visible injury, allowing perpetrators to avoid accountability and victims to be disbelieved.

Research shows that even brief oxygen deprivation can cause traumatic brain injury, memory loss, cognitive impairment, depression and anxiety, and long-term neurological damage. Repeated strangulation can change the structure of the brain itself, and now violent pornography is mainstreaming strangulation as normal sexual behaviour, despite medical experts confirming there is no safe way to strangle someone. A recent UK government review found that violent pornography is directly contributing to the rise of choking in sexual encounters, especially amongst young men, shaping expectations and distorting consent. The UK is now moving to criminalise pornography depicting strangulation and to require tech platforms to block it, because children who view violent pornography are three to six times more likely to display harmful, coercive sexual behaviour. These harms demand urgent national attention.

Leading the national conversation on non-fatal strangulation is the Red Rose Foundation based in my electorate of Bonner. They have been a driving force behind recognising strangulation as a distinct and serious offence, educating police, courts, medical professionals and frontline workers; building community awareness about the signs of injuries; delivering specialist trauma support for survivors; and pushing for stronger laws around coercive control. The Red Rose Foundation has changed the national understanding of this crime. Their advocacy helped establish non-fatal strangulation offences in law in Queensland, their training is equipping professionals to identify brain injury and coercive control, and their message is clear and unequivocal. Strangulation is a lethal form of violence. There is no safe level, no safe way and no context that makes it acceptable. During these 16 days of activism, I honour their leadership and recommit to supporting their work

This year we have seen 62 women murdered. Labor continues to stand with those still living in fear, and we amplify the voices of those who have survived. Ending gender based violence must be a national mission, and together we can end it within a generation.

Ben Small (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I spent a decade on the road as a volunteer ambulance officer, and I've been to more than my fair share of houses after dark to see the kids trembling in the corner and the female partner's voice cracking with emotion as she says, 'It's fine; it's fine; no, no, no, I'll be alright.' The statistics that we've heard today in this place tell the real story, and that's a stain on our national story. The reality is that women around Australia today and the kids growing up in those homes aren't fine. Indeed, when we talk about prosperity in this place, about our true wealth as a country, I think we need to measure it not only by how high we can reach economically but by how low and how broad our safety nets in this country really are. We can't lay claim to being a prosperous nation in the true sense of the word with our blind eye turned to so many.

Unfortunately, it has manifested as it has across the country in the south-west of WA. In my own community there's an organisation called Harbour refuge who are dedicated to providing support to victims of family and domestic violence. Of course, this was a city recently visited by the Prime Minister and his whole cabinet, so I think it's an appropriate time to put on record what Bunbury can be like for a largely unseen cohort of our community who are pretty much focused on survival. I want to put on the record today the numbers that evidence the failings of the 'system' in Australia today.

In a single month this year, Harbour refuge received 122 calls for assistance, and 84 of those were in direct relation to a domestic violence incident. In the course of the financial year, Harbour refuge reported it received 1,410 calls from domestic-abuse survivors in that period alone. To put that into context, the Harbour refuge in Bunbury has only seven beds for women. That's 1,410 calls for assistance and seven beds. Reporting in my local community has highlighted that significant gap, and Harbour CEO Ali White has gone on to say to local media that 817 vulnerable women and children were unable to be accommodated in the most recent financial year. So, while they've managed to support some 246 women through their Safe at Home program, the capacity to deliver that outreach service is constrained, with just three FTE funded through to 2027. That's 817 left on the street, with nowhere to flee to, being told there is no room. Of course, in a regional community, unlike in a metro area, the ability to flee is further compounded by issues like limited public transport. There's no room for mothers who have summoned the courage to flee violence and no room for the children who witnessed the fallout.

We need to do better as a country. Although more federal money is not the answer to everything, the reality is that we simply do need to do better in terms of funding ongoing operational staffing and providing resources to organisations like Harbour. On a day like today, when we're discussing these sorts of issues, I think it is fair to say that we can do better, because only through backing our non-profit and our community based organisations can we truly provide wraparound services in every community in Australia.

This is not a 'one size fits all' sort of problem. Indeed, it's not a problem that we can simply announce a particular program for and expect that, magically, we will have resolved one of the great and intractable problems of our society. But the failure of our governance really, as I said earlier, is a stain on our national character, and, unfortunately, in that plight of every mother and her children sleeping rough, we see a tragic loss of humanity in our country. If taxpayer dollars are allocated to that human indignity, then we need to see some long-term, compassionate and specialised solutions for safe accommodation in every community across Australia. I'm very pleased to advocate for organisations like Harbour refuge because the work they do is truly meaningful.

Matt Smith (Leichhardt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the motion marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. I commend the member for Forrest and the member for Bonner for contributing to this motion. It is an area that is sometimes devoid of male voices, and it should not be. First, a statistic—we know that one in four women and one in 14 men have experienced violence by an intimate partner since the age of 15. This is a shocking statistic, and, sadly, one that we know to be very true.

My own electorate is obviously not immune. We are incredibly overrepresented in domestic violence. It is, unfortunately, something that I've been dragged into. A friend of mine, a work colleague, at the most dangerous time of her life, was preparing to leave her intimate partner, the father of her child. When it was time to go, he killed her and then he killed himself, leaving that child an orphan who has to live with that. It is a stain on our country and our community that that little girl will grow up knowing what her father was capable of and without her mother's love.

This happened during the campaign, and it has driven me to reach out to the families commission and to work with the member for Hunter to find a way through and find a way to stop this, because this is a man problem. This is men—primarily men; not always, but mostly men—inflicting damage on the people that we're meant to love, the people that we should protect and the people who should feel the safest around us. And the help's not coming. The manosphere, the internet, toxic masculinity—all these things are contributing to create a world that is less safe for our women and children, and tackling that is the purview of other men. Statistically, one in 11 men will admit to committing an act of physical violence on their partner, which means, if you have a cricket team, one of your teammates—statistically—is a perpetrator. That's a very sobering reality.

But it is not hopeless. I visit many women's and domestic violence shelters. I speak right across the Cape to rural and remote communities. And I know that the women are taking the lead. They want to help the men. At a recent forum of remote Indigenous domestic violence shelters, the women implored me: 'We have to help our men. They are broken. We can build them back up to be who they want to be, to be who they should be.' Nobody wants to behave like this. The perpetrators don't want to be this way. The victims certainly don't want it to be this way. So we have to find a way, together, to shine that light, to deliver that help. If you are one of those people who can't control themselves, who are having trouble with domestic violence, then seek help; find a way.

Let's be worthy of the people who love us. Let's be strong enough to stand up in the pub or the locker room or at work and say: 'This isn't acceptable. This is where you go to make that change. This is what your family deserves.' I'm not going through this again. I'm not going to get that phone call. I'm not going to walk into a place where somebody I spent time with used to be. I'm not going to go and help my friends and her friends pack up her office because she's not coming back to work on Monday. That's got to end. It's not acceptable anymore. And I am so relieved that other men stood to talk on this today, and I hope more men will stand up and follow their lead and take control of this once and for all and stop this. We are better, our nation is better, our men are better and our women deserve better.

Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Newcastle for raising the very important issue of gender based violence and our colleague the member for Leichhardt for his very generous contribution. But I really feel that I need to draw attention to the government's failure to address one of the key drivers of gender based violence, that being gambling. Less than a month ago this parliament received the second yearly report from the independent Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commission. The report noted that over the last 15 years there has been no shortage of royal commissions, inquiries, coronial inquests and reviews into the experiences of women and children facing violence. Those reports have come up with over a thousand recommendations—many repeated, many consistent, many overlapping.

We don't lack solutions for gender based violence. They're well established. What we lack is coordinated action led by the federal government to implement solutions that will save women's lives. The 2020 report, commissioned by the Commonwealth Institute of Family Studies, into the relationship between gambling and domestic violence against women found a clear correlation between gambling addiction and financial abuse as well as other harms. It shared stories of women who'd had to support the family alone while their partners gambled away his wages, women who'd had their bank accounts cleaned out and their mortgage payments taken by a partner to spend on gambling, women who'd lost their homes and their assets and been coerced or defrauded into taking on debt, and women who'd been assaulted by partners angry because of their losses. Amongst the study's seven headline recommendations is the suggestion that we should tighten regulation of the gambling industry to prevent gambling related harm, including a reduction in gambling advertising—a recommendation clearly stated but as yet unimplemented.

Another example, which will be familiar to MPs in this place, is the report produced by the Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs into online gambling and those experiencing gambling harm. It's now 28 months since the You win some, you lose more report was released. It cited evidence from the Australian Gambling Research Centre that 69 per cent of Australians believe they see too many betting advertisements. The committee recommended banning online gambling advertising, in part due to the serious psychological, health, financial and relationship harm that is caused by gambling: another consistent finding, and another recommendation clearly stated but, as yet, unimplemented.

Last year, the Prime Minister described family violence as a national crisis. He commissioned an urgent review of preventative measures. That review recommended, amongst other things, government intervention in the industries from which family violence gets its foundations and its means of escalation—notably, gambling and alcohol. The review recommended restrictions leading to a total ban on gambling advertising—another recommendation without action.

Experts are imploring the government to develop a razor-sharp focus on coordinated, accountable delivery of longstanding recommendations to prevent family violence. All are wondering why a prime minister who called family violence a national crisis now seems more concerned about protecting the revenue of broadcasters and sporting codes than protecting women and children from abuse. We don't need more recommendations. Australian women and children need action.

One of the best places to start is by banning predatory gambling advertising. In the words of the late Peta Murphy:

We have a culture where sport and gambling are intrinsically linked. These behaviours are causing increasingly widespread and serious harm to individuals, families and communities.

Police are called to hundreds of thousands of domestic and family violence incidents a year in Australia—as many as one every two minutes, or two since I began this speech. If we banned gambling advertising this week, we could save dozens or even hundreds of Australian women from family violence this summer. It's time for the government to stop talking and to do what it knows it needs to do. It's time to ban gambling advertising.

Helen Haines (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.