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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-10-14 Daily Xml
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Violence Against Women

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon. C. Bonaros:

That this council—

1. Acknowledges the 55 Australian women who died as a result of violence in 2020;

2. Expresses its deepest condolences to the families, friends and loved ones of the murdered women;

3. Acknowledges the importance of the annual Pay Our Respects event in honouring the women whose lives were tragically taken in the preceding year in Australia;

4. Recognises the importance of the annual Pay Our Respects event in highlighting the prevalence of violence against women;

5. Recognises the role of gender equality in ending violence against women;

6. Condemns all forms of violence against women; and

7. Calls upon all members of parliament to continue to advocate for the prevention of violence.

(Continued from 3 February 2021.)

The Hon. I. PNEVMATIKOS (15:56): I rise to support the motion and in so doing thank the Hon. Connie Bonaros for bringing this motion to the chamber. Earlier this year, I stood on the steps out the front of this place at the Pay Our Respects event. I was joined by 54 others who were standing up for the 55 Australian women who lost their lives because of violence in 2020. Others in this place, people involved in the prevention of violence against women and families, and families of those who have died, came together to remember and honour those women.

Seeing the sea of people on the steps and in the crowd was a reminder of how widespread and entrenched violence against women is in our state. SA Police investigate more than 10,000 related crimes each year, and South Australians made more than 15,000 calls to the 1800 RESPECT hotline in 2019-20. Data released by SA Police earlier this year revealed that during the pandemic there has been a significant increase in the number of domestic violence assaults during the state's lockdown. Calls to police on the family and domestic violence hotline increased by 11 per cent in 2020 compared to 2019. That is 1,000 more reported assaults.

The pandemic has shown us how big the problem is; however, it is important that we do not blame the pandemic for people's behaviour. Yes, the pressures of the pandemic, economic factors, and social factors all placed increased pressure on families; however, that does not explain the reality that men choose to use violence in their relationships.

In the short 3½ years I have been in this chamber I have already lost count of the number of times I have stood up and spoken on this issue. This chamber and the other place have mentioned the words 'sexual violence', 'domestic violence', 'gendered violence' and 'violence against women' that many times I think that some members are becoming desensitised and immune to the impact violence against women has on our community.

Things are slow moving in this place, but if we compare the number of times we have talked about these issues to how much we have actually been able to change, it is dismal. It is incredible that we make it seem like some ridiculously hard thing to do. We know that if we invest in public housing, increase funding to DV support programs and change our laws we could change these statistics, but we continue to sit here and twiddle our thumbs.

It is not just the state government but the federal government as well. We sit and talk about what to do, while we continue to have one woman die every week at the hands of a violent partner. In fact, just yesterday, Senator Anne Ruston, federal Minister for Women's Safety, was in the paper saying that business must lead on respect for women. I agree that we all have to play a role, but when your government is not pulling their weight, it is very rich to push responsibility onto others.

Violence against women must be viewed holistically. We cannot have strong laws without strong policy. We cannot have programs specific to domestic violence without housing, economic and justice programs. Violence against women cannot be seen as a standalone issue. This is where we consistently get it wrong. It is not enough to pass protective laws. It is not enough to tell business to do better. We need an approach that is all-inclusive and means that women and children have the best chance of leaving violent situations, because currently we are failing. Until we reduce the number of deaths to zero, we are failing.

The Hon. R.A. SIMMS (16:01): I rise on behalf of the Greens to speak in favour of this very important motion, and in so doing I want to reflect, as the Hon. Irene Pnevmatikos has done, on some of the statistics—really alarming statistics—on the prevalence of domestic violence and violence against women in our community.

In South Australia, there was an 11 per cent increase in family and domestic-related assaults reported to police during the pandemic—that is, 2020. Obviously, we know the pandemic is ongoing. SA domestic violence services experienced a large spike in demand for emergency accommodation coinciding with the pandemic in 2020. Nationally, there is a very similar trend. A survey of 15,000 women in May 2020 found that two-thirds of those who had experienced violence during the first few months of the pandemic said the violence had either started or escalated during that time.

On average, one woman a week is murdered by her current or former partner—one woman a week. Australian women are nearly three times more likely than men to experience violence from an intimate partner. Almost 12 women a day are hospitalised for assault injuries perpetrated by a spouse or domestic partner, and in 2018 to 2019 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women had 29 times the rate of hospitalisation for non-fatal violence assaults when compared with non-Indigenous women.

It is very clear that this parliament needs to take action, and I commend the Hon. Connie Bonaros for putting this forward because it is so vitally important that we show leadership on this. What does that leadership look like? Of course, it is through passing resolutions, such as this today. It is also about ensuring that there is support for women who are in crisis: governments adequately funding crisis accommodation and ensuring that women and children have safe spaces to go.

It is also about leading cultural change. It is about stopping the narrative that says that women are somehow to blame for the terrible things that men are doing to them—this narrative that tries to pathologise or blame women or shame women in terms of how they dress and so on. We need to stop that kind of destructive, sexist and misogynistic framing and instead get men to take responsibility for their behaviour.

Men need to step up and take responsibility for stamping out this appalling behaviour and ending this violence because it is men who are the perpetrators of this behaviour. It is really vitally important that men in our society take responsibility for their actions and that we see an end to the sexist and misogynistic language that is all too often associated with this debate. I commend the motion on behalf of the Greens and encourage members to support it.

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (16:04): I rise to support this motion and to thank the Hon. Connie Bonaros for putting it on the Notice Paper. Indeed, this is a very important event that a number of members of this chamber attend every year in January. South Australians are invited to congregate on the steps of Parliament House as a community to pay our respects to women murdered by domestic or gendered violence. Those who take part in this event are invited to hold a placard with a number which represents each of the women who have been murdered in the previous year.

Each woman's name is read and silence observed. At the 2021 event, 55 Australian women were remembered. I acknowledge that there were a number of members from this chamber and from my own party, including Carolyn Power MP, Rachel Sanderson MP, Paula Luethen MP, the Hon. Jing Lee, and the Hon. Dr Centofanti, as well as myself. I would also like to commend the previous speakers for their comments. I agree with all of them in the sense that everybody must do everything they can to prevent and eliminate violence against women. We will not have reached that goal until there are no lives lost and no violence experienced.

There is a range of ways that we, as a community, address these matters. It is a job for government, it is a job for business, and it is a job for the community. It is a job within families and among friends. I would particularly like to thank the Hon. Rob Simms for his comments about men taking responsibility because one of the areas in which there is more activity is for men to be allies in the movement and to be calling out the sorts of attitudes which clearly demonstrate disrespect towards women.

There are campaigns, certainly at a national level, which the South Australian government contributes to, which are very much in the primary prevention space as well, which is about attitude change starting early. It can be quite a distressing area to work within, and in a policy space to work within as well, but I think we need to recognise that as well as the services we provide we need to change attitudes into the future and so make sure that we are looking towards younger people for that generational change. There is certainly a lot of good activity that takes place within schools to support that as well. There is a lot of activity across the board. There is White Ribbon, which is very active in the community. There are also the services that are being provided and funded through government.

In terms of our government's response, we have been very focused, prior to the election and also since coming to government, on ensuring that we are providing services in a range of ways because pathways for people to receive help if they are experiencing violence may be many. There are people who are in crisis but there are also people in the community who do not necessarily even recognise that what they are experiencing is domestic violence and so to try to reach out to them so that they can then get help is also part of what we are working towards.

In terms of funding, we have committed more than $21 million in new funding towards a range of different measures which are across the board. We have also worked with the commonwealth government, and I have the privilege to be part of the Women's Safety Ministers Group which has met regularly, particularly during the pandemic when the increasing complexity and the challenges that people have had, being locked up at home, in reaching out and seeking help have been recognised as something that we need to address. To that end, there has been a national partnership to address this that has provided nearly $10 million in additional funding. That has enabled us to expand services, fast-track measures, and respond to some immediate challenges so that we can provide funding to those who need it most.

At the same time, we also very recently launched the Women's Leadership and Economic Security Strategy. This is important because we know that if women have economic security and independence they can leave; they have choices, and they can make those decisions without having to fear they will be financially disadvantaged because they cannot escape their situation. So it is incredibly important for us to work on that as well.

In terms of the $21 million of funding, that has included $4 million to roll out 40 new crisis accommodation beds for South Australians. We had that as one of our election commitments. The original commitment was for two specific sites, but when we consulted with the sector they told us it should be configured differently, that we needed to include regional South Australia in that. That has been delivered in that sense.

The other thing they said to us—which has been a bit novel for some people to appreciate—is that some of that funding should go to beds for perpetrators. The concept behind that is that if it is assessed as safe for the family to remain in the family home it is much less disruptive for them; the children can keep going to the same school and be connected within their communities, and the perpetrator is removed. That has been completed and those services are up and running.

We also decided to fund the women's domestic violence crisis line 24 hours, because we know that people need that emergency advice any time of the day or night. We funded a new Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme, which I have spoken about in this place before. That scheme enables someone who is a friend of an individual, or an individual themselves, to check on someone's criminal history to see whether there is some history of violence. We have had a very high take-up of people making inquiries through that scheme, where they can be interviewed by SAPOL and advised of someone's past record.

We have also delivered a new—since we came into government—domestic violence app, which is referred via the women's frontline DV services. Someone can access that app, which enables them to contact emergency services very quickly and gives them peace of mind if they are in a potentially unsafe situation. We also provided funding to the peak body for all the services, which is now known as Embolden.

We have been opening domestic violence safety hubs in regional areas; I will have the privilege of opening the newest one at Whyalla next week. The concept of these is that for most of the models we train up Women's Information Service volunteers, who are recruited from the local community. They are very intensively trained in what to recognise, how to understand the impacts, and how to assist people in that situation. As I have said previously, there are people in the community who may not appreciate that what they are experiencing is something we call domestic violence. They can start to get some assistance, and in some instances they may escape that dangerous situation.

We also provided funding to Stop it at the Start, the national campaign to change attitudes, and have provided a $5 million interest-free loan to develop a new DV support housing initiative, which I am hoping we will be able to announce soon. In a similar vein, other initiatives include the Ask for Angela initiative, where a woman in a licensed venue can go to the bar and 'ask for Angela' if she is experiencing sexual harassment or something of that nature. We have the document Committed to Safety, which encompasses all of our policy. It is a living document that we add to as we need to.

Particularly within the Attorney-General space we have implemented new laws targeting the perpetrators of domestic violence, giving authorities stronger tools to tackle repeat and serious offenders, including a new standalone criminal offence of strangulation, which has come into force, as well as tougher penalties for repeated breaches of intervention orders.

We remain committed to all and any ways that we can improve the situation for South Australians, including through the Attorney-General extending whether we have the current 'right to ask' model through the disclosure scheme to a 'right to know' model. The Attorney remains as committed as I, as does the Assistant Minister for Domestic and Family Violence Prevention, Ms Carolyn Power, to ensuring we are doing everything as a government we can to address this terrible issue.

The Hon. C. BONAROS (16:15): As the Hon. Michelle Lensink just said, as the Hon. Irene Pnevmatikos highlighted, as the Hon. Rob Simms highlighted, each and every one of us has a responsibility to work towards ending violence against women. Each and every one of us has a responsibility to ensure that men in particular have a role to play in ending that violence.

I commend this government, and I said that when I first spoke to this motion, for their increase in funding. I know that this is clearly an area that many of us are passionate about. When it comes to domestic violence, when it comes to the murder of innocent men, women and children, of course we all are equally as concerned and of course we all want those numbers to disappear.

The numbers, the grim death tolls, are unacceptable; we know that. We know that the 55 women who were killed in 2020 was unacceptable. We know that the 63 women killed in 2019 was unacceptable. We know that the 71 women murdered in 2018 was unacceptable. So I am really pleased that earlier this year we got together, as we do, and we honoured those women to highlight the continued need for change, and we did so across the political divide, and that is how it should be.

It took almost an hour to read each and every woman's name, their age, their number, and pay our respects to each with a moment's silence. The silence in those moments was profound and I doubt there was a dry eye on the steps or in the crowd. This year, I am sad to say that there has been another 35 women to date who have been killed as a result of violence. We are not at the end of the year and we know that that number is going to go up.

We know that on the Saturday just past, we heard the tragic news of the murder of Michelle Darragh, who was pregnant with her third child. She was the mum of two young boys and she and her former partner were discovered with life-threatening injuries by police. Sadly, she died when help arrived. Of course, we do not know the circumstances of that death, but what we do know, what we know for sure as a result of that murder, is that there are two little kids and a grieving family who have been left behind to pick up the pieces.

That is the tragedy of this, that there is always an innocent life taken and then there is an innocent family left behind to somehow try to make sense of what has happened and to pick up the pieces. Next year, it is my sincere hope—and I think I can speak for all honourable members when I say it is our sincere hope—that the event will be much shorter because the numbers will be fewer.

In summing-up, I would like to again express my gratitude to all honourable members because I know that we all support this, and in particular the Hon. Irene Pnevmatikos, the Hon. Robert Simms and the Hon. Michelle Lensink for their contributions. I would like to also thank, once again, the organisers of the Pay Our Respects event, Gillian Lewis and Stacey Nelan, because their selfless advocacy is needed. As admirable and as needed as it is, I hope we reach a day where we do not need them to be doing what they do for us every year. With those words, I thank members and commend the motion to the house.

Motion carried.

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