More funding, a focus on prevention programs, and the appointment of a new women’s safety commissioner are among almost 100 recommendations arising from a long-running inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violence.
A bipartisan report into the issue, tabled in Parliament on Thursday, is also calling for a tougher approach to perpetrators, urging state and territory governments make coercive control a criminal offence and for a new national public database that would record breaches of domestic violence orders.
Arguing a “coordinated and comprehensive” national response is needed to drive down the rates of family and sexual violence in the community, the report also notes that more funding is needed for frontline services, along with greater funding certainty for providers and program evaluation.
The recommendations, backed by Coalition and Labor MPs, come as the government faces pressure to back up its recent cabinet reshuffle which amplified a female “perspective” with action and funding in next month’s budget, including for domestic violence services.
The parliamentary inquiry established to examine how governments and the community can prevent violence against women and their children and support those most at risk has been underway since June last year. The report was tabled on Thursday.
Chair of the committee, Liberal National MP Andrew Wallace, said that while more funding was needed from both levels of government to tackle the problem, the committee had also agreed that better evaluation of how money was spent was needed.
“It is about making sure that organisations are adequately resourced, yes, but we have to target those programs that are working well and ditch the ones that are not,” Wallace told Guardian Australia.
“I think all levels of government are going to have to stump up more cash, but it is not just a matter of providing more cash to provide more services, the principle of primary prevention is very important as well.”
Wallace also said governments needed to look at cracking down on the pornography industry to ensure young people were not exposed to hardcore porn, including the possibility of legislating an identity verification program.
On coercive control, the report says the behaviour is not only a form of abuse in its own right, but is a “precursor to severe physical violence and homicide”, and should be made a criminal offence. Tasmania is the only Australian state which criminalises the behaviour.
“Family, domestic and sexual violence is no longer just the purview of simply just physical violence; submissions made to the committee were in fact that gaslighting and psychological mind games can be worse than the physical violence,” Wallace said.
Incidents of domestic violence have surged during the pandemic and, despite the federal government’s $150m in additional domestic violence funding announced in March, frontline services have been struggling to meet demand.
Another of the recommendations from parliament’s Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs is to fund community legal centres for a minimum of five years, responding to calls from providers for greater funding certainty.
According to Women’s Legal Services Australia, one woman a week is murdered in Australia, with one in four Australian women having experienced family violence, and half of all women having experienced sexual harassment during their lifetime.
But the WLSA told the committee that the way funding was allocated limited “the capacity to build relationships, trust and continuity, which are key to successful long-term partnerships”.
Women’s Safety NSW had argued that a 12-year, $12bn commitment was needed to achieve “real change”, saying the problem was only going to be addressed with investment in evidence-based solutions.
“Survivors of domestic, family and sexual violence, and the women and children’s safety organisations that support them, are tired of inquiries that result in glossy reports, abstract promises and modest investments,” Women’s Safety NSW said in its submission to the committee.
“We want a line in the sand. We want a 12-year, $12bn plan. We cannot wish away this problem. It is going to require investment in evidence-based solutions. If we do this, we can achieve real change, now and generationally.”
While the report’s 88 recommendations have been backed by both Labor and Coalition members of the committee, Labor presented additional comments that called on the commonwealth to take more ambitious action, saying the response over the past seven years had been “inadequate”.
“The evidence taken by this Committee was unequivocal – the scale of the problem is greater than either the resources or resolve that the Australian government has committed to date,” Labor members said.
“A crucial test for the government is how quickly it responds to this report, and how willing it is to enact its recommendations.”
Findings from the inquiry are expected to inform the next national plan to reduce violence against women and their children, which is being developed with the states and territories through the Women’s Safety Taskforce.
The government has also pledged to take action in response to a review into Australia’s workplace culture undertaken by sex discrimination commissioner Kate Jenkins, the Respect@Work report, which was completed last year.
Jenkins is also undertaking another review into the work culture of Parliament House, triggered by the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins by a colleague in a ministerial office.
Under pressure following weeks of revelations about the mistreatment of women in Parliament House, twin rape allegations and the poor behaviour of Liberal National MP Andrew Laming, prime minister Scott Morrison last week announced a front bench reshuffle that promoted women, while also establishing a new cabinet taskforce that would bring a “fresh lens” to government deliberations.
Ahead of the report’s release, Social Services Minister Anne Ruston, who has added women’s safety to her portfolio, said she wanted to ensure there was “good and accurate data” guiding government investment.
“So that we can show what is working and what is not working so we are investing in the right places,” Ruston told Sky News.
She also said there needed to be a strong focus on prevention programs and the cause of violence, with the ultimate target of eradicating family, sexual and domestic violence.
“We must be towards zero, it can not be anything else. We need to strive to have a situation where family, domestic and sexual violence just does not occur in our society.”
