Recording: A new decade for women’s safety?

Descriptive transcript

Hello, everybody. Thank you for joining us for today's event. Before we begin, I'd like to acknowledge that wherever we are in Australia, we are on the traditional lands of First Nations peoples. I live in Glebe, so I'm on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. That's also the land upon which UTS stands, so a particular respect to the Gadigal people as the traditional custodians of knowledge for the land upon which our university is built.

My name's Verity Firth. I'm the Executive Director of Social Justice at the Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion at UTS. It's my real pleasure to be joined today by an incredibly distinguished panel of speakers. We have Senator Jenny McAllister, June Oscar, and Dr Anne Summers, and I'll give them all a proper introduction in a minute.

I also want to acknowledge that today's discussion does include topics that are upsetting and can cause distress or be triggering. So, if at any time you feel you are becoming overwhelmed or distressed, just take a break from the webinar. You can turn it off. You can always rejoin later if you feel like it, but you don't need to sit there feeling distressed or triggered. If you do feel overwhelmed in any way, please speak to somebody you trust, and you can also contact 1800RESPECT, and we're going to post those contact details in the chat box now.

This year, I've had the privilege to speak with women working across a range of sectors, raising awareness and addressing the emergency that is violence against women and children in Australia. It's an issue that has caught the national spotlight time and time again, amplifying the calls to reform responses, processes, and the culture of Australian society. Violence against women and children is an issue that plagues every community and every institution, from our schools to our parliament.

In 2022, the government is set to release a new national plan to reduce violence against women and their children. It will set the agenda for the next decade on key priorities and investment areas. But will this plan rectify flawed approaches, like not having a standalone plan by and for First Nations women? Will this plan make a difference to the devastating rate at which women are being killed?

Today's speakers have been working tirelessly to change the outcomes for women and children. We're honoured to be joined by each of them, and I look forward to hearing their ideas on what the next plan needs to deliver.

We're first going to hear from Senator Jenny McAllister. Senator McAllister has served as a Senator for New South Wales since 2015, representing the Australian Labor Party. She is currently the Shadow Cabinet Secretary, Shadow Assistant Minister to the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, and Shadow Assistant Minister for Communities and the Prevention of Family Violence. Senator McAllister is committed to addressing the challenges that lead to many Australians facing poverty and disadvantage, as well as being a strong advocate for women and children fleeing family violence. Welcome, Senator, and I'd like you to give us some opening remarks, please.

Thank you very much, Verity. I'm really grateful to you and to UTS for putting on today's event. I'm joining from Gadigal country, and I pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging. I'd also like to acknowledge June and Anne. I had the very good fortune of attending a big meeting in Broome with Kimberley women, where June was talking to that group about her groundbreaking report, Wiyi Yani U Thangani. You could almost physically feel the respect and admiration for June in that room when she spoke, and I think also the pride in that work that June's done and the pride in that community in seeing their voices reflected there.

Anne, of course, has always broken new ground. Her book, Damned Whores and God's Police, really shook up the way that we thought about women in Australia. She hasn't really stopped doing that since. So it's a very great honour to share the stage with these two women, even remotely. They are giants in Australian public life.

I thought I'd start with a quote by a survivor advocate named Geraldine Bilson. She might be familiar to some of you listening on because she's very prominent. She said this: "In 2010, Australia's previous national plan to reduce violence against women and children was established. This was at almost the exact same time that I met my perpetrator. On a national level, what followed was a decade lacking in political will to achieve the plan's goals. For me, I would spend a lot of that time living with and loving a man who I should have been able to trust. But instead, I was left physically injured and psychologically destroyed. My experience of domestic abuse sits alongside our nation's story of failure in achieving a future free from violence. And so I can't help but think how differently my own life may have transpired had Australia truly committed to ending violence against women."

Now, that is a really powerful quote from Geraldine, and I find it very sad. Because we all know the statistics, but Geraldine's story asks us to reflect on what might have been different, and also why listening to survivor advocates matters. So today, I wanted to reflect a bit on what actually did happen over that decade, and how we might do better in the next one.

In 2007, Labor came into government, and we were determined to tackle the epidemic of violence against women and children. Kevin Rudd and Tanya Plibersek set up the National Council to Reduce Violence Against Women and Their Children, and they asked them for recommendations. The council recommended the creation of a national plan which could coordinate a concerted effort to end violence right across the federation.

In the first few years of the plan, Julia Gillard, Jenny Macklin, Julie Collins, Kate Ellis, Tanya Plibersek, and other Labor women made the most of this opportunity. One of the clearest markers of this is the institutional framework that they established. We saw the creation of a national hotline, 1800RESPECT, a violence prevention body, Our Watch, and the Australian National Research Organisation for Women's Safety, ANROWS. These years represented some of the most productive and progressive periods for women's safety policy.

Now, it is deeply unfortunate, and this is the kindest way I can say it, that this enthusiasm, this energy, and this progress did not survive the 2013 change of government. The first minister for women under the Coalition government, you may remember, was Tony Abbott, and that set the tone for the eight years that followed. For most of that time, the attitude of this government to women's safety policy has oscillated between benign indifference and muted hostility.

Now, the national plan has saved us from the worst consequences of this. The rhythm of the national action plans has meant that every three years, successive Coalition governments have had to do something, anything, to move women's safety policy forward. But that is not a recipe for the ambition and coordinated action that is required, and it shows.

In one particularly lacklustre year, continuing funding for 1800RESPECT was listed as an initiative. I can imagine the conversation in the minister's office: "What shall we announce? What are we going to do? I know, we will announce that we do not intend to cut a vital service." A national plan without national leadership will struggle to achieve national progress.

Now, state and territory jurisdictions, such as Victoria, have attached the problem with energy, with attention, and a substantial commitment of resources. But a woman's safety should not depend on where she lives. Now, the current national plan expires this year, and a consultation process is underway to develop a new one.

Now, I've given a bleak assessment, but I do want to offer this note of hope. We have never been in a better position to demand a more ambitious response. We know much more now about the actions and mentality of perpetrators, about how abuse manifests, about the psychosocial consequences on victims and children, and about the short- and long-term physical harm.

A network of survivors and advocates has also worked incredibly hard to educate Australians, and policymakers like me owe it to Rosie Batty, Grace Tame, Jess Hill, women like Geraldine, who I quoted earlier, and we owe it to them to leverage the public awareness that they have created. And Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have made it abundantly clear that services will be most successful when they are designed and delivered by First Nations people.

Now, I don't know what will be in the next national plan, but I wanted to talk about three key changes to deliver the ambition, creativity, and urgency that violence in our community demands.

First, it is time to unequivocally recognise the context in which violence occurs. I'm increasingly convinced that the reason the Coalition's response to women's safety is so piecemeal is because they're unwilling to recognise this context. In Scott Morrison's interview with Tracey Grimshaw earlier this year, he used the word "respect" 14 times. He did not use the word "equality" once. And this is a problem. Violence against women and their children is a function of inequality. Without addressing this deficit in all of its manifestations, we will never make lasting progress, and we will continue to see, as we saw in the last budget, a grab bag of policies rather than a coordinated response.

Secondly, we need to address the whole cycle of violence. A public conversation about violence, I think understandably, tends to focus on crisis and crisis response. This is incredibly important, of course, but it is time to do more. We need to build on what we've learnt about the nature of violence and extend the focus to prevention, to early intervention, and to recovery. And this has to be matched by investment. These responses need to work for all people, especially those who've been left out in the past. Women from migrant backgrounds, women with disability, First Nations women, LGBTI people. First Nations women have made it clear that they seek a standalone plan for their communities, and this is a call that Labor supports.

Thirdly, we need to take advantage of the opportunity to drive change across jurisdictions and across portfolios. We need the federal government to look at the areas it has responsibility for and really do this with a real creativity and ambition to drive change.

Now, the Prime Minister is quite fond of pointing out that everything is the states' responsibility. And it is true that the responsibility for tackling domestic and family violence does not only lie with the Commonwealth. The role of states and territories is vital. But the fact that the Commonwealth does not control all the levers does not mean it does not have a significant role to play. The Commonwealth needs to make a meaningful contribution in the areas that it controls. And that is quite a lot. It's social security, it's migration, it's the National Disability Insurance Agency, it's family law, it's the workplace relations system.

And victim-survivors rely on government services to support them, to keep them safe and to help them rebuild their lives. These services cannot be allowed to enable abuse. And I've seen little evidence that reforming these services is a priority for the current government.

In the end, the Commonwealth is by far the biggest player. It controls the purse strings and it is the only level of government that is able to bring others together and to lead.

Domestic violence destroys families, communities and the ability of victim-survivors to live full, happy lives and contribute to their communities. And we also know how the presence of violence affects children and the trauma can stay with children for a lifetime.

Across the country, more and more women are giving voice to the hurt and the trauma of their past. They demand action and they demand we do better. They're asking this simple question: If our leaders can come together to respond to a pandemic, why should they not be able to apply the same level of dedication and focus to an epidemic of domestic and family violence? Thanks, Verity.

Thanks very much for that, Jenny. We're now going to move to our panellists and it's my absolute honour today to introduce June Oscar and Dr Anne Summers to the discussion. June Oscar AO is the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner. She's a proud Bunuba woman from Fitzroy Crossing in Western Australia's Kimberley region. She is a strong advocate for Indigenous Australian languages, social justice, women's issues and has worked tirelessly to reduce foetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

June has held a raft of influential positions, including with the Kimberley Land Council, the Kimberley Language Resource Centre and the Kimberley Interpreting Service, and with WA's Lililwan project. June began her five-year term as Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner in 2017. Welcome, June.

Dr Anne Summers AO is employed under a Paul Ramsay Foundation Fellowship at UTS in order to research innovative solutions to domestic and family violence in Australia. Anne is a journalist and the author of nine books, including the classic Damned Whores and God's Police. She has had a long history of involvement in the women's movement in Australia, including helping to found Elsie, Australia's first modern women's refuge. She ran the Office of the Status of Women in Canberra from 1983 to 1986 and was advisor on women's issues to Prime Minister Paul Keating in the early 90s. Welcome, Anne.

So, my first question, I'm going to come to you first, June, and then I'd like a response from you as well, Anne. The current national plan that Jenny actually talked about was launched in 2011. What, if any, impact do you think it has had on reducing violence against women and children? June.

Thank you, Anne. Before I begin, I'd like to acknowledge the lands of the peoples that we all gather on today, all of us, and I acknowledge my Bunuba people as I come to this meeting from the Children and Parents Centre here in Fitzroy Crossing, the lands of the Dungu people. Thank you very much, and I'd like to acknowledge all of those women that have gone because of the violence and the pain and the trauma that they have suffered. We will remember them always in all of our families.

Things have barely changed, in my view, and in many ways they have become worse. The statistics of harm faced by our women and children are devastating, and they are not moving. I can rattle off whole numbers, statistics. For example, our women are 32 times as likely to be hospitalised due to family violence as non-Indigenous women. We are killed by family violence at two times the rate. Our children are taken away at 11 times the rate of non-Indigenous children in our country, a large number because of the violence and the abuse, and we know our women are afraid of reporting violence because of this staggering rate of removals.

The numbers go on and on, and paint a picture of an appalling situation that has not changed since the first national plan was launched.

I think what the plan has done, though, it has raised awareness amongst Australians at the level of violence that exists in this country. But I don't think that it has improved Australians' understanding of the violence experienced particularly by First Nations women and children and our families. I don't think as a public we understand the unique circumstances and living historical legacy in which violence has been and continues to be perpetrated against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children. So much of the violence we experience is driven by external structural forces.

To address it, we have to look at the intersections of poverty, inequalities, racism, and sexism, and how they disproportionately impact our women and too often dehumanises us.

In the Women's Voices National Engagement, which I led, and I spoke to thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and girls right across our country, women were absolutely clear. We have to look at the underlying root causes of inequality and all the intersecting factors if we are to address violence. We simply cannot address violence unless we understand the context in which it occurs. And the plan in its previous state has not done that sufficiently for our women and children. And that is why we absolutely need a distinct plan.

Thanks, June. Anne, what do you think, what impact do you think the current national plan has had?

First of all, Verity, before I respond to that question, I would like to acknowledge that I am speaking to you this evening from, or my evening here, from New York, from the land of the Lenape Indians. Unfortunately, none of whom have survived the onslaught of the arrival of many generations of other people since they first inhabited this island.

It's not very common in this country to acknowledge the original inhabitants of the land. In fact, many African American visitors who used to come to Australia when I was there were quite intrigued by the practice that we have. I think they found it to be quite a wonderful idea, but it's not something that's really taken off here. But I just wanted to mention that.

My views about the national plan, I've spoken about them before, including in a previous webinar hosted by your centre, Verity, back on International Women's Day this year. I just think it is a tragedy almost beyond measurement or comprehension that we've had a plan that was meant to reduce violence against women and their children in place for 11 years. There is no evidence at all that there has been any reduction.

We know, if we just took it purely from a crime point of view, because domestic violence is, of course, a criminal offence, that most crimes in Australia, ranging from stealing motor vehicles, to robbery, to burglary, even murder, have all declined in the period of the plan. The crimes against women in the form of domestic violence have not declined, and in fact, have probably increased.

One of the issues here, I think there's two issues. One is that the official statistics, as measured by the Personal Safety Survey, which the Australian Bureau of Statistics conducts every four years, it's our major measurement of violence in this country. According to the most recent one, which was done in 2016, there's another one that's just been done and the results will be coming out next year. But according to the 2016 survey, 17% of all Australian women had experienced violence at the hands of a partner.

Now, that sounds like a high number, until you take into account that that number refers to every Australian woman over the age of 18, including the very large number who've never had a partner. So immediately, the figure is too low. If you start to dig into those figures, as I have for the current project that I'm working on, and I will be releasing a report early next year, in which I will be showing the actual prevalence of violence amongst women who have actually been in a situation to experience, i.e. living with a partner, is many, many, many times higher than the national figures suggest.

So, we all sort of know that instinctively, we know that anecdotally, but I'm telling you, we can measure it. We can measure the failure of the plan by the fact that the prevalence of violence against women, and I'm speaking women generally here, I'm not talking about breaking down into particular groups right now, but I will be doing that. We know that the plan has absolutely failed to reduce violence. It has, in fact, while the plan's been in existence, that violence has increased, not only, I think, in extent, but also in form.

We know there are new forms of violence that are now being practiced by many perpetrators, some of which do not involve physical violence. We know the biggest increase is in what we would call psychological warfare, you know, the emotional abuse. We call it coercive control. There are other names for it, but it's behaviour which are designed to control women and deny them their autonomy, and many women will tell you that it is as bad, in many ways, as physical violence. It's harder to prove. You can't get the police to believe you, so it's very hard to even have the fact that you're suffering this violence accepted and understood by people, and it leaves very long-lasting scars on women and kids who are being controlled in that manner, and that's something that I think we do understand more about now than we perhaps did earlier on.

I agree with June that having a national plan there has made us face the consequences of violence a bit more, perhaps, than if it wasn't there, but I think that it wouldn't have happened without the efforts of brave individuals like Rosie Batty, who used her position as Australian of the Year to go around the country and say, "Look, family violence is not something that happens to poor people in poor suburbs. It happens everywhere to everybody. It happened to me, a nice middle-class woman like me. It happened to me. I experienced violence myself, and my son was murdered by his father." I think she did more than almost any government I can think of to make domestic and family violence an issue in this country.

The second point I'd make is that I was terribly, terribly disappointed in the Women's Safety Summit that was held in Canberra a few weeks back, and I was disappointed by the fact that there was absolutely no recognition or acknowledgement of the fact that the current plan has failed. I know governments don't like to admit failure, so maybe they wouldn't have used that language, but I think it did behoove the government to say, "Okay, we haven't reduced violence. Why not? What went wrong?" And yet there was no examination at that safety summit of what went wrong.

I attended one of the pre-summit consultation groups, and again, there was no discussion about what went wrong. All it was, and I think one of the weaknesses of the summit itself, and also of the consultations that went on prior, were that they replicated the silos that we currently have. The groups that work on the plan never talk to each other. There's the sector, the women who run the refuges and the shelters and who deliver these incredible emergency services. There's the people who work in the legal areas. There's the people who work on primary prevention and all the other groups, and they rarely intersect with each other. I think that one of the problems with the consultations prior to the summit is that they were based on those existing groups, and there was no capacity for conversations across sectors so that we might learn from each other.

So I think that was a fundamental weakness. So we had a summit, they had all these talks and sessions and seminars and workshops. At the end of it, what do we have? We had no acknowledgement or explanation for why 11 years later we have failed to reduce violence. Not having acknowledged that, not having examined that, and not having tried to figure out what we did wrong, it means that we go into a new plan on a false premise. We think just about, oh, let's call it a plan. Well, actually, if it is to be a real plan, it has to have objectives. I know we're going to come to this in a minute, but a plan is not just a good intention, it's not a strategy, it's not a set of great ideas. A plan is something that has a set of objectives, that it has measurable targets that have to be achieved.

One point I would make is that I completely agree with June, that having a separate plan for First Nations women is probably a good thing to do, but it's going to suffer from the same problems if it isn't approached properly and treated as a plan with clear, measurable objectives to which the government has to be held to account.

Yes, and I am going to come back and talk to you, Anne, about that, because I'd also like to get the Senator's views on accountability, really, how do we actually keep government accountable. But June, before I do that, you were very clear in your opening remarks about the need for a standalone plan for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. You've said that we are now at this window of opportunity. Is this going to happen? Are you confident that this plan and investment to match will be delivered?

Thank you, Verity. Look, I'm hopeful. I am always hopeful. I carry hope. But to be confident, we need to witness a very different way of working from government with our communities. Commitments must follow through with genuine long-term action, not action or announcements that are targeted and one-off for a news appearance. We need actions that lead to an ongoing shift, a transformative shift in the way that government does business, and we are yet to see that.

However, I'm pleased to acknowledge and say that the government finally listened to what our women have been calling for for a very long time. They have agreed to a distinct action plan that sits within the mainstream plan. I have been very clear in my communications with government that agreements are one thing, but the resources need to be in place to make sure we can develop a meaningful action plan that is well implemented, is outcome focused, and has strong accountability mechanisms.

And I agree absolutely with what Anne just pointed to in plans and their enabling and functioning and delivering abilities. We have to start putting in the structural mechanisms to guarantee results. An advisory council is a very good first step, but they should be well resourced. They should have access to the specialist advice of a dedicated task force, and groups and communities across the country need to be consistently engaged throughout the development and the actualisation of the plan.

I've also been very clear and have been advocating tirelessly for more than just this plan. If we are serious about ending violence, as the government has said that they are, we need a broader holistic approach to realising intersectional gender equality. I'm calling for a national framework for action for First Nations gender justice and equality. This was a major recommendation of Wiyi Yani U Thangani. Although we have been pursuing the development of this plan with government, I'm yet to receive any funding support to make it happen.

I'm very afraid that if we do not see a commitment, we will see another landmark report, and this one specifically addressing the needs of our First Nations women and girls, end up on the shelf exactly at the time when we are meant to be implementing self-determined solutions to address the needs of our women and girls.

Again, throughout Wiyi Yani U Thangani, women and girls could not have been clearer: to address all issues, including violence, we have to respond to the intersecting factors of housing, employment, creating meaningful economies based in opportunities where there's culture and language and on country. We have to put care and supports for caring work at the centre of how we operate and eradicate poverty. Australia does not have a framework in place to achieve gender equality in this nation. That is what we really need, and I believe it should be spearheaded by our First Nations women. Thank you, Verity.

Thanks, June. That's absolutely right. I'm just going to come to you, Anne, because I now want to talk about targets and ministerial accountability and actually getting this to happen. I know that you've had roles in government doing this sort of thing, so I'm really interested in your views. But what June was talking about, the structural mechanisms to guarantee results, and that broader holistic approach, like how you actually bring in, how you break down those silos and then have structural mechanisms to guarantee results. What are your thoughts around that, Anne? And then I'm going to come to you, Jenny, from a sort of senator's viewpoint. Anne.

Well, Verity, I think I'd actually approach it from the other way around, because I think I have to say, when I was in government, we didn't have anything like this. In fact, violence against women, I ran the Office of the Status of Women, violence against women was barely on our radar. I mean, it was just, I guess this shows us how relatively, that was 30 years ago, how relatively recently we have recognised the extent of violence, and we have determined that we need to do something about it, and we have made governments listen.

I would say the first plan, I would give Tanya and Julia and Jenny and all those responsible for it credit for the fact they did set objectives in that plan. But what they didn't do was set targets whereby we could measure whether or not those objectives were met. The objectives tended to be a little too vague, in my opinion, like one of them was, you know, communities should be safe. Well, that is a very laudable aim, but how in the hell do you measure whether or not that's happened? So my view is that we have to have hard targets, and they have to be meaningful reporting against whether or not they've been achieved.

I think the Closing the Gap is a kind of an example of where we could go, but the kinds of data points that are measured by Closing the Gap, such as improvements in literacy, improvements in employment, improvements in education, and so on, are not quite the right points that you'd use for violence. We need to develop different ways of measuring violence, and it's not for me to say how it's done. It's something I wish the summit had at least started to talk about.

But I would say this: when we talk about domestic violence, or family violence, or intimate partner violence, we're talking about a huge range of different behaviours when we talk about that violence. I think in order to have meaningful targets and meaningful ways of measuring progress in reducing violence, we have to break it down into different categories, and we have to have different strategies and different targets for different types of violence.

Now, for example, we are all aware of the increase in financial abuse and technologically enabled violence. They are both two forms of violence which are much easier to recognise by outside parties, and not just within the prison of the home. We know the banks are doing some very good work in assisting here with women who are subjected to financial abuse by their partners. So those are two areas that will be relatively easy to identify targets and set ways to achieve them.

The other point I'd make is that none of this can be achieved without data. We have to have data, otherwise we cannot measure progress. So I've never thought I'd ever say those words. I've never been a data person. But over the past year, I have buried myself in the data of violence against women, and I have had my socks chopped off at what I have learned, and which I will shortly be sharing with a wider audience.

Just a final point I'd make is I think that we have to do two things when it comes to measuring the impact of violence and the reduction in violence. We have to measure actual violence, and as I said, we might want to break it down in different categories and find different ways of working out how to measure those. But I think we also have to measure the lives of women post escaping violence. So once the woman has left the violent partner, once she has escaped the refuge, once she has started to remake her life, what is that life like? Is she employed? Does she have enough money to support herself and her kids? Does she have adequate housing? Are her health needs being looked after?

We know, for example, that women who have experienced violence, their general health is far worse than other women. They're more susceptible to cancer, they're more susceptible to all kinds of health problems. We need to bring those sorts of measurements into the equation about how we measure the impact of violence in this country.

That's really pertinent, Anne. Senator?

You can hear, I think, in these contributions from