A royal commission into family violence is not needed for governments to take strong and immediate action to tackle the issue, with enough evidence for what works already available, experts in the sector say.
In May, the Victorian opposition leader, Daniel Andrews, declared domestic violence a “national emergency”, promising if elected on 29 November he would launch the royal commission early next year. It would investigate gaps in the judicial, police, and victim support systems, he said.
It came as police commissioner Ken Lay highlighted there were 60,000 family violence incidents, including the deaths of 29 women and eight children, within 12 months.
Among the children killed were Luke Batty, with an inquest into his death currently under way, and Savannah and Indianna Mihayo, all three of whom were murdered by their fathers.
The shadow minister for women, Danielle Green, had said the terms of reference for the commission would be announced before the election, but her office told Guardian Australia on Friday this was now unlikely.
While a commission would add weight to efforts to tackle family violence, experts said it should not be a priority ahead of other, more urgent, measures.
Dr Chris Atmore, a senior policy adviser at the Federation of Community Legal Centres in Victoria, said a royal commission was “certainly not one of our election asks”.
“But we agree there is value in it and support the idea, subject to a few provisos. There are a number of changes that can and should be made without waiting for a royal commission to begin.”
Her organisation is part of No More Deaths, a coalition which has outlined 25 priority areas for the government in tackling domestic violence. Many of them could begin immediately, Atmore says.
“For example we clearly need to better fund lawyer services for family violence victims across the state so in every court, she has access to adequate and affordable legal assistance,” she said.
“We also already know we need infrastructure to provide more safe waiting spaces for affected family members in court, so they don’t have to interact with the perpetrator.”
Labor has also committed to a $2m Community Legal Centre Assistance Fund to support programs and services.
Meanwhile, the Coalition’s minister for community services, Mary Wooldridge, unveiled a $150m family violence package, which, among other programs, will fund a multi-disciplinary centre for women and children, outreach teachers and a trial of GPS monitoring of high-risk perpetrators.
“In the last 12 months alone we have invested $200m to address issues around violence against women, and there are a range of issues being invested in all of which are evidence- based,” Wooldridge said.
“We have very clear views about what needs to occur and sometimes the details need to be refined and improved, but we know we need to work on prevention, issues of gender inequality, and facilitate more joined-up system responses.
“We know we need to strengthen the way we hold men accountable and the way our court system works.”
While Wooldridge is well regarded by the sector, domestic violence groups have said the government must do more, largely in the form of more funding.
A spokesman for the No to Violence group, Rodney Vlais, said the government had introduced some useful interventions over its four-year term, such as a recent $4.5m in funding for risk assessment and risk management panels. However, this fell far short of the $16m service providers had requested, he said.
“Mary Wooldridge has done an admirable job,” Vlais said.
“But for most of the government’s four-year term there hasn’t been cross-ministerial leadership on family violence, and many of the measures implemented have only come very recently.”
He said none of the major parties, including the Greens, had provided enough detail about how they planned to address family violence. Within the next fortnight No More Deaths would release a scorecard to rate the commitment of each party to the issue, he said.
As for the royal commission promised by Labor, he said the benefit would be that its recommendations were independent and “last beyond a single election cycle”.
“On the other hand we have existing knowledge about how to refocus and improve family violence service systems. We already know renewed and strengthened planning and vision is needed so we can look at what good primary prevention work looks like,” he said.
The Victorian Greens’ spokeswoman for women, Colleen Hartland, said funding allocated by the government was not enough to tackle a problem which cost the Victorian economy $3.4bn every year.
“I don’t think government has taken notice of this issue until now, until it became an election issue as a result of some high-profile deaths,” she said.
“We need to protect women at court and train magistrates to manage these cases better, and making courts safer for victims is an obvious measure we could roll out now.”
In April, Fiona Warzywoda was allegedly stabbed to death by her partner, Craig McDermott, after attending court over a family violence order in place against him.
“I want the money spent now,” Hartland said.
“There is just $13.4m in total new funding in this government’s budget for family violence. We don’t need to wait for outcomes, there is so much evidence for a range of programs that already work.”
