After a 13-month inquiry, Australia’s first royal commission into family violence delivered its report to the Victorian governor on Tuesday morning. The report contains the commission’s recommendations about how Victoria should prevent and respond to family violence.
The report will be made available to journalists and stakeholders in a budget-style lock-up at 9.30am on Wednesday, before being made public and tabled to parliament in a special out-of-sessions tabling at roughly 11am.
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, will respond to the report then, having previously promised to accept every one of the commission’s recommendations. He will be joined by Australia’s first minister for the prevention of family violence, Fiona Richardson.
The report’s recommendations are expected to cover how courts, police, community services, politicians and other stakeholders can better prevent family violence, improve early intervention, support victims, make perpetrators accountable, better coordinate community and government responses, and better evaluate strategies, frameworks, policies, programs and services.
In a statement, the commissioner, Marcia Neave, thanked the more than 200 people – including family violence experts, police, psychologists, doctors, survivors, and lawyers – who gave evidence.
“We are very grateful to everyone who attended our community consultations, who made submissions to the commission, appeared at our public hearings, and attended our roundtable discussions,” she said.
“Many of those who contributed to our work have been directly or indirectly affected by family violence and we thank them for their courage and insight.”
The chief executive officer of Domestic Violence Victoria, Fiona McCormack, will be at the Wednesday morning lock-up, when she and other experts will see the recommendations for the first time.
“We’re hoping for recommendations that support a more systematic approach to engaging with men who use violence,” she told Guardian Australia.
“We’ve got a system that’s largely designed to provide support for women and children when they reach out, which is obviously critical, and obviously that needs to continue. But the cause of the violence is going under the radar and we’ve got to tilt the system so it is much more focused on the men who behave this way.
“We want to see the responsibility taken away from women to protect themselves and their children and to utilise opportunities to interrupt the violence and engage with men.”
A dedicated source of family violence funding that was secure – regardless of election cycles and which political party held office – was vital. Domestic Violence Victoria also supported a recommendation made by a coroner, Ian Gray, after his inquest into the death of family violence victim Luke Batty for specialist women’s advocates to support women through the court system.
“These advocates can follow women during their journey through the system and make sure the system is working as it’s supposed to, and provide real-time feedback when it’s not so the system can correct itself,” McCormack said.
“We need to know more immediately when and where the system is failing women.”
The spokeswoman for Federation of Community Legal Centres family violence, Dr Chris Atmore, said about 40% of cases opened by community legal centres each year related to family violence.
She was disappointed that Andrews’ preliminary funding announcement last week of $10m to family violence service providers had not included community legal centres. She hoped his response to the report on Wednesday would include a commitment to long-term funding for the centres that will help fill the gap left when federal government funding is cut by 30% next year.
“The other aspect that has really come through in the hearings is how important it is to integrate not just services but also governance of the family violence system,” Atmore said.
“In the past few years the justice side of the family violence response has just not been properly integrated. Now we have a minister for the prevention of family violence, but it’s still the case that other ministers, including the attorney general, are not visibly at the table with minister Richardson.
“We think that’s an absolute priority, because sometimes there are mixed messages about the court system and how it responds to family violence, and given family violence cases are the most common kind of cases, better integration is essential.”
Sectors such as law enforcement and the government should also be made to give more weight to the expertise that the family violence sector could offer when forming policies and when responding to family violence.
“In the past few years we haven’t been genuinely consulted as much as we could have when new policies and new strategies are being developed and considered,” she said.
“Sometimes it’s a done deal or we’re just given something to respond to as opposed to being genuinely involved in developing a strategy from the start.”
Community legal centres would also look for recommendations that would lead to more consistency around how different sectors defined risk to victims, and responded to that risk.
“We need everyone to be on the same page,” she said.
After receiving the report on Tuesday, Andrews said: “This report will change everything.
“Our family violence system has failed victims for too long.
“I thank the many people who have contributed to the royal commission, particularly the brave victim survivors and the people who support them.”
Richardson said the report marked “a new era in response to family violence, giving survivors the change they have long wanted”.
