The statistics are a jarring indictment on Australia’s lack of substantive progress in the area of domestic violence. With more than two women murdered by an intimate partner each week, it’s difficult to understand why the public continues to see the issue as a niche concern.
‘It’s an amazing bit of othering,’ says Amy Gray, a freelance journalist who has published widely on the topic. ‘When we describe it as an aberration or something that happens to other people, we effectively say this is not an incredibly dangerous, widespread issue that needs to be managed, that needs to be fought.’
There seems to be a resistance to hear the female voice on this subject. It seems to be a case of packaging it as something that is palatable for men rather than presenting an opportunity to unpack a challenge for men.
Led by Australian of the Year Rosie Batty and former Victorian police chief Ken Lay, the panel was fortified by a $100 million commitment to roll out a national action plan over the next four years. The PM has stressed the need for the commonwealth and states to agree on a standardised approach to police protection.
Although the move was welcomed by domestic violence campaigners, it came on the back of 2014 funding cuts which affected peak bodies and key service providers. Advocacy bodies continue to call for a royal commission into the issue, which they say would be a sign of governmental commitment to lasting change.
‘With an issue like this you need short-term fixes now, you need to have those services that are out there: counselling support, services for homelessness,’ says Samantha Trenoweth, editor of Fury: Women Write about Sex, Power and Violence.
‘In the long term it’s really a matter of fixing society, of fixing those really big issues about the way we see women and men.’
Danny Blay, a family violence prevention consultant and former executive officer of No to Violence, agrees that this is a complex issue which requires both immediate and longer-term initiatives from government, alongside community-wide engagement.
‘When talking about preventing violence against women I think it’s really easy to talk about law and order,’ he says. ‘It’s much more difficult to plough through and unpack all the motivations, the attitudes and beliefs of men about women, about relationships and about entitlement.’
According to Amy Gray, the framework around this crucial national conversation needs a shift to bring about lasting change.
‘There seems to be a resistance to hear the female voice on this subject. It seems to be a case of packaging it as something that is palatable for men, rather than presenting an opportunity to unpack a challenge for men,’ she says.
‘It’s an optional discussion about what male entitlement is. They might want to discuss it but they don’t want to discuss it every day, they don’t want to work on it every day.’
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Trenoweth draws an analogy between domestic violence and the end of slavery: ‘How much time did we spend workshopping and counselling the slave owners?’
A focus on inequality may be more effective than other approaches, she says.
‘There’s an enormous educational job to be carried out to change the way people think.'
‘All the statistics show that in countries where women are valued and have access to better education with more roles in parliament and more roles on corporate boards there’s less violence against women but in countries where women don’t have equal rights and don’t have control of their bodies there’s greater incidence of violence against women.’
So what is men’s role in the discussion?
‘The hard work comes when we provide spaces to have those conversations and challenging men to really analyse themselves,’ says Danny Blay.
‘Take stock and challenge yourself about what your beliefs and attitudes and behaviours are right now. Think about what the impact of those things are; you might think they’re normal, but you’ve been socialised; we men have been socialised to engage that way and we don’t really think about it.’
An earlier version of this article included the statistic that domestic violence is the leading cause of death for women under 45, in fact it is the leading preventable cause of death for women under 45.
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