- by Clare Marino
- The Guardian
- Issue #2143
With more than one million votes already cast, the two major parties finally announced policies aimed at combatting the scourge of family and gendered violence.
The Coalition scraped together seemingly every female member of the team to stand awkwardly behind Peter Dutton for the media conference. The Prime Minister stopped smiling. Both sides announced promises to tackle family violence. It was too little and too late.
Experts in the gendered violence sector say the issue has fallen off the political agenda. Four women were killed across Australia in just one week recently.
The evidence is clear that the problem has not been solved. Little progress has been made. Women are still dying at the hands of men known to them.
On average, one woman is killed every nine days by a current or former partner. Around one in four men in Australia aged 18 to 45 say they have used physical and/or sexual violence against an intimate partner. One in four women has experienced violence, emotional abuse, or economic abuse by a cohabitating partner since the age of 15.
Less than a year ago Prime Minister Albanese called violence against women a “national crisis.” News of the deaths of four women in a week should have seen our political leaders outraged and committing themselves to do more, but in the midst of an election campaign there was little response from either party.
In the leaders’ debates there was not one question about gender-based violence. The cost of living, house prices, and nuclear submarines were all canvassed, but women’s right to live without fear of violence was not worth a mention.
The Coalition, although working hard to whip up fear of violent crime and bang the drum on their pet issue of law and order, has not seen fit to include women’s fear of male violence in their tub-thumping.
Labor and the Coalition’s new policies aimed at addressing violence against women have been labelled tepid, underfunded efforts, too focused on narrow aspects of the problem and not properly resourcing existing commitments. Labor’s Commitment to Women announcement focuses primarily on addressing financial abuse. Strategies include preventing perpetrators from using tax and corporate systems to accrue debts as a form of coercive control; making perpetrators liable for debts incurred by the victim-survivor because of coercive control and stopping perpetrators accessing the superannuation of victim-survivors after death. Labor also pledged $8.6 million for perpetrator responses, including early interventions for young people.
The Coalition’s strategy is based on 14 commitments, many of them focused on law and order. Plans include a national domestic violence register and the development of uniform national knife laws, expanding the emergency accommodation program and the Leaving Violence Program (one-off funding to help with the costs of leaving an abusive relationship), and increasing crisis helpline services.
Prevention of family violence is a complex problem that needs a multi-pronged approach, including law reform, resourcing of specialised housing, health and other support services, multi-agency cooperation, and prevention strategies that tackle misogyny and disrespect. It requires long-term funding commitments.
The need to engage men and boys in the effort to prevent gendered violence barely rated a mention in the recent announcements. Long-term, secure housing has clearly been identified as a key need by the family violence sector, but again, this was not in the plans of either major party.
Why such an uninspiring, gutless and last-minute response? Are political advisers fearful of a backlash from male voters, worried about gender politics dividing their support? Look around the world at the rise of the manosphere and the harm being done to young men by hate-peddling misogynist influencers. Parties that cared about real democracy would care about this threat to more than half the population.
For women, this election has been a missed opportunity.
