The sex discrimination commissioner, Elizabeth Broderick, says she has phoned 24 of the most powerful men in government and business to make a personal plea on family violence.
“Will you use your power and influence, your collective voice and wisdom to create change for women?” she asked them.
Addressing an audience at the State Library of Victoria on Tuesday night, Broderick said 1.2m Australian women were living in an intimate relationship characterised by violence, or had recently done so.
While it was important to document their stories, Broderick said it was vital that “powerful men” heard their stories too and became champions for change.
“I now also understand that to move men from interest to action, we need to make the case for change personal – we must engage both their head and their heart,” she said.
Broderick spoke of her work with senior men within the Australian Defence Force to tackle a culture of sexism. She flew sexual harassment and assault victims from across the country to meet defence chiefs so they could “hear and feel what extreme exclusion means”.
“To know what it’s like to be on exercise for two months when no one speaks to you,” she said.
“To feel what it is like to be sexually assaulted by your instructor, the very person you go to for advice; to understand what it’s like to face your perpetrator every day at work even though you reported his assault to your superiors; to learn what it means to have your career ruined and your peers ostracise you because you had the courage to make a complaint.”
Her speech echoed that of army chief Lieutenant General David Morrison, who during his white ribbon day address last week said women were denied opportunities accorded to men as a birthright.
Family violence has become a prominent issue in the Victoria election campaign.
On Wednesday morning the opposition leader, Daniel Andrews, said $23m would immediately be allocated to family violence support services if he was elected. Labor announced a royal commission early in the campaign.
In October the community services minister, Mary Wooldridge, announced funding of $150m to tackle family violence. On Wednesday she said an additional $4m would be allocated to improve women’s safety in mental health services if the Coalition was re-elected.
A report from the Safe Steps Family Violence Response Centre has revealed that the number of women and children in Victoria requiring accommodation to remove them from a potentially fatal family violence crisis had risen by 86% in two years.
“The phones at our response centre ring on average every three minutes,” Safe Steps chief executive Annette Gillespie said.
“What is more distressing than this is the increase in the number of women and children who are presenting as high-risk cases.
Gillespie said it was encouraging to see politicians announcing measures to address family violence, but the promises made by the major parties were not enough.
“This is the first time family violence has been a key election campaign topic and while both parties have put forward strong responses, what they have announced will not be sufficient to tackle this issue,” she said. “We need to deliver a statewide, operational framework that links all of the family violence support services across the state together.
“Addressing this will be complex and will take a lot of time, it may take a generation. While most men are not violent, all men benefit from a male-dominated, male-privileged culture.”
A coalition of organisations concerned with family violence has released a list of 25 immediate priorities for whichever party wins government as part of its No More Deaths campaign.
Over the past 12 months 29 women and eight children have been killed in Victoria as a result of family violence. In April, Fiona Warzywoda was allegedly stabbed to death by her partner, Craig McDermott, after attending court over a family violence order against him.
An inquest is under way into the death of 11-year-old Luke Batty, who was killed by his father, Greg Anderson, in February. The father of Savannah and Indianna Mihayo confessed to murdering his daughters in April.
Next week, the inquest into the murder of Sargun Ragi, who was killed by her husband, will start at the Victorian coroner’s court.
