Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I said in my first speech, we've been tackling the issue of violence against women all wrong. We have to stop thinking of this as a women's-only issue; it's a societal issue that disproportionately affects women and children. After decades of working as an activist, advocate and consultant in the gender equality space, I know the statistics all too well. As a First Nations woman, we are 35 times more likely to experience family violence and 10 times more likely to experience death because of family violence. As a Black feminist, a mother, an advocate and now a senator, I want to end violence against women and girls. In this place, it's our responsibility to commit to preventing violence from happening to our children and our grandchildren, and it's our responsibility to ensure the safety of women at home, at work and in public. We must take abuse in all forms more seriously and commit to structural change.

The draft National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children is ours for consultation. While it recognises that gender equality is key to tackling the end to violence against women, it fails to detail how that will actually be achieved. I heard very clearly Grace Tame and Brittany Higgins at the National Press Club yesterday talk about how violence needs to be taken much more seriously, how we need structural reform and how we need more education about violence against women and girls. The Greens have already committed the $1 billion a year that is needed to ensure that programs are fully funded and that no-one is turned away from frontline services. To put that into perspective, the government spends 10 times that on subsidies for their fossil-fuel mates. I've had enough with this Morrison government's half-baked attempts to eliminate violence against women. It's time to kick the Liberals out and put the Greens in balance of power.