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Legislative Council - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2008-11-12 Daily Xml
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WHITE RIBBON DAY

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (15:46): Away from that flight of fantasy to reality! White Ribbon Day is being held on Tuesday 25 November to recognise that a cultural change is needed to eradicate violence towards women and children. I am proud to be an ambassador for the White Ribbon Foundation. White Ribbon Day was first held in Canada in 1991, two years after the massacre of 14 women in Montreal in a gender-based attack. The men who initiated the event recognised that to stamp out violence against women there had to be cultural change, and that change needed to come from other men. Men had to stand up to their brothers, fathers, friends and colleagues and say no to violence against women.

Since these beginnings in Canada some 17 years ago, White Ribbon Day has expanded around the globe. It is a day for men to stand up and say to their brothers, 'Enough is enough; we will not tolerate your violence against our sisters—it is unacceptable in any context and must be stopped'.

The statistics regarding violence against women are frightening. An ABS study in 2005 found that in the previous 12 months 4.7 per cent of all women had experienced physical violence and 1.6 per cent had experienced sexual violence. Overall, about 33 per cent of all women had experienced some form of physical violence since the age of 15 years, and 19 per cent had experienced sexual violence.

Other figures suggest that surveys of women attending a general practice in Australia put domestic violence rates between 8 and 28 per cent in a 12-month period. The same ABS survey of 2005 estimated that only 36 per cent of female victims of violence reported the violence to police, and only 19 per cent of female victims of sexual assault did. Frighteningly, it is estimated that approximately 80 per cent of female victims of assault know their offender.

We all know it is unacceptable, but we must be more vocal in expressing our disgust about the actions of men who use intimidation, violence and control in their relationships with their wives and partners, mothers, sisters and friends. We must make sure that these men are completely aware of how unacceptable we think their behaviour is, because on some level these men are of the belief that what they are doing is okay and it is somehow acceptable to use their brute force to dominate the women in their life. They have learnt, either through their home life, peer groups or popular culture, that violence against women is all right, that it is their right as a man, and that for some reason the woman deserved it.

Make no mistake: in no instance at all is any form of violence acceptable. It is abhorrent that violence is so normalised, and we must recognise that it is normalised through popular song lyrics, through casual jokes, and through language that reduces the woman's part in sexual intercourse to that of an orifice only. Men demean women and in doing so devalue them, which, so the warped logic goes, makes violence against women okay.

We must make sure that the messages we project are positive, and we must restructure the narrative in instances where violence against women is presented as all right. It is not all right. It is not just the overt messages that need to be monitored. Child and adolescent psychologist Michael Carr-Greg has said that boys receive all kinds of messages about what it means to be a man. Many of these are conflicting and potentially harmful to their development, particularly the expectation to be tough and in control.

These concepts of strength can be confused with violence. By engaging a range of White Ribbon Day ambassadors from a number of different fields, the White Ribbon Foundation has appointed men who are public figures and who speak to a variety of audiences.

From politicians, such as myself and a number of other members of the South Australian parliament, to Wil Anderson and David Koch from the media, from sportsmen such as Kostya Tszyu and David Wirripanda to businessmen like Napoleon Perdis and Aboriginal elders like Ben Taylor of the Noongar group, we band together to say 'No' to violence against women. Wearing a white ribbon on the 25th shows that men believe that violence towards women is unacceptable, and I encourage all members to demonstrate their support for this important event.

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