Domestic and Family Violence

Ms LUETHEN (King) (15:14): I am going to speak about being the change we wish to see. I am thankful for the important discussion I have been having with my colleagues in our Liberal government about the opportunity to lead further change in eradicating family violence. This is urgent because violence against one in three women is unacceptable, and it is heartbreaking that over 60 per cent of parents have children in their care when violence occurs. The good news is that this significant social problem is also ultimately preventable. It is time to address the underlying factors that cause the problem, and this includes our acceptance of disrespectful attitudes and behaviours.

An ANROWS report about young Australians' attitudes to violence against women and gender equality suggests that Australia is on track to achieve positive changes in factors contributing to violence against women. However, there are young Australians who hold attitudes that may contribute to violence against women and perpetuate this cycle.

Preventing violence perpetrated or experienced by young people requires a twofold approach. As well as addressing norms and practices among young people themselves, attention needs to be given to norms, structures and practices in the wider community, as these also influence young people's experiences, attitudes and behaviours. As South Australian community leaders, we must start to role model attitudes and behaviours that will help stop violence at the start.

Let's reflect on our behaviours in this parliament. For the past 15 months, I have felt uneasy being part of an environment where parliamentarians yell and interrupt each other aggressively—especially when one person is trying to deliver their answer or speech—and sometimes violently thump their desks while yelling at us and use threatening, non-verbal behaviour, such as indicating hanging and slitting throats as a person is speaking. Most alarmingly, often when this disrespectful behaviour is occurring, there are large groups of children sitting in our public galleries watching us.

I have asked myself: how can our kids learn to be respectful to each other when their community leaders set the example that it is okay to behave this way? The routinely disrespectful and overly combative behaviour of members of parliament gets in the way of a healthy debate, which should be focused on what is in the best interests of our community, and creates an inappropriate behavioural model for our youth.

In any other workplace this disrespectful behaviour would not only be unacceptable but the elected members could also expect to face serious disciplinary action from their employer. It never would have been acceptable in my previous workplaces to have a large number of colleagues yelling nonstop at me while I was speaking. I do understand that it is difficult to sit quietly while other people may tell untruths and make personal attacks; however, there are parliamentary processes to address this.

I believe that behaviour in this house is out of step with community expectations and that it is time for us to set a better, more respectful leadership example for our community and our younger generation. We all deserve to work in a safe workplace, just as everyone in South Australia has the right to feel safe at home, school, work and on our streets.

Smart, talented women I have spoken to about politics have said to me: why would they want to subject themselves to this disrespectful behaviour that they have seen in parliament? While combative, disrespectful behaviour continues, many good, skilled people may be dissuaded from even trying to run for office. Anyone who claims that I, and women, need to somehow toughen up completely misses the point of what I am talking about today.

An important way to change this undesired behaviour is through education and, more directly, through strengthening the social sanctions against it. I commend our Marshall Liberal government for delivering a raft of domestic violence responses, such as new strangulation laws, more crisis accommodation and the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme. But it is time for us also to work together and deliver real change to stop violence at the start. We must hold ourselves to account for more respectful behaviour. I thank you, Mr Speaker, for agreeing to add the consideration of the White Ribbon Workplace Accreditation Program to the Joint Parliamentary Service Committee agenda.

The White Ribbon Workplace Accreditation Program engenders a whole-of-organisation commitment to stop violence against women and, yes, it comes at a cost, but this is a very small investment when compared with the billions of dollars it is costing our state to cope with the consequence of cycles of violence and the millions of dollars we are investing in domestic violence crisis response.