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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-10-29 Daily Xml
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Domestic and Family Violence

The Hon. J.S. LEE (14:55): My question is to the Minister for Human Services about primary prevention of domestic and family violence. Can the minister please provide an update to the council on how the government is contributing to the national Stop it at the Start campaign?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (14:55): I thank the honourable member for her question and for her ongoing interest in this issue. The Assistant Minister for Domestic and Family Violence Prevention, Carolyn Power MP, and myself were very pleased, on behalf of the government, to recently announce additional funding for the next round of the Stop it at the Start campaign, over $1.86 million, which comes on top of our pre-election commitment, which was funded in last year's budget, of $11.9 million towards a range of initiatives to assist people who are experiencing family and domestic violence and also in the prevention space.

This particular initiative is well and truly in the prevention space. Honourable members may be aware of the previous campaign of Stop it at the Start, which has been funded nationally and was funded by the previous government for the first round of advertising. We are aware that there is strong community support for ceasing violence against women, but significant barriers exist to change because there has been low recognition of the core issues and where it begins.

We know that there is a clear link between violence towards women, attitudes of disrespect and gender inequality. A number of attitudes are unconscious and yet are firmly entrenched among many Australian adults and children. As adults, young people learn these attitudes at an early age, often unwittingly. We certainly saw that the previous campaign was targeted at parents and their children and some of the messages that people can receive unintentionally.

This next round, which is also part of the fourth action plan for 2019 to 2022, has been endorsed by COAG. There will also be a greater focus on sexual violence. We know that the awareness of domestic and family violence has increased in our community and is also leading to greater help seeking. The previous campaign was very successful, in that there were television commercials which were viewed over 45 million times online and the website received 1.3 million page views. There had been some 68,000 downloads of key resources, such as a guide to help influencers start a conversation about respect.

However, new figures show that more than 70 per cent of sexual violence instances are not reported to police and approximately one in 10 result in a guilty finding in court. Clearly, those are statistics that are unacceptable and we are seeking to reverse them. These actions are being coordinated at a national level. I look forward to seeing the viewing of those commercials and materials as time goes on.

I am sure that we will see some changes in community attitudes, as they are surveyed on a fairly regular basis, and that those campaigns will result in improvements to attitudes and therefore improvements to violence towards women and children.

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