Perpetrators of domestic and family violence can expect to be monitored more closely, Tony Abbott has flagged during question time.
“We need to ensure that men with a predisposition to violence against members of their families are better monitored, better tracked, so that the instant there is any suggestion of harm the police can act,” the prime minister said.
Earlier this year, the government put forward a proposal to the Council of Australian Governments (Coag) that high-risk domestic violence offenders be tracked via ankle bracelets in the same way that sex offenders in some states are monitored.
Abbott said he would have “more to say on this in the next few days”.
The prime minister was responding to a question on Monday from the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, who wanted the prime minister to commit to a national summit on the issue.
Abbott indicated that he would consider it.
“I certainly don’t rule out another summit,” he told the chamber. “What I think we need is concerted action and maybe a summit might help but what we really want is action.”
Shorten said that a national summit was “not a talkfest”, but an assembly of frontline experts and “a platform for the voices of survivors and their families”.
“Family violence requires national leadership,” he said.
The prime minister argued that cultural change was needed.
“Anyone who strikes a woman is not a real man,” he said, to cheers of “hear, hear”.
“Anyone who strikes a woman or a child is a coward,” Abbott continued. “All of us have a very heavy duty to say to our brothers, to our fathers, to our sons, to our mates, that domestic violence is never ever acceptable, never ever justifiable.”
Coag will report back on a suite of measures aimed at tackling domestic violence, including how perpetrators use technology to menace their victims, by the end of the year.
Labor will introduce a bill next week to create federal laws criminalising the sharing of private sexual images without consent, a practice known as revenge porn.
