Australia has the policies and the laws to tackle an epidemic of domestic violence but is failing to implement them, Quentin Bryce has said.
The former governor-general, who oversaw a landmark domestic violence report for the Queensland government this year, said she feared the focus on violence against women would fade before substantial change could be achieved.
Former sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick, who joined Bryce to discuss domestic violence at a feminism conference in Sydney, agreed. She said the issue was now “front and centre” of the national debate but could easily slip away.
“I feel a deep centre of caution inside myself about that,” said Bryce, who has agreed to oversee the implementation of her report’s 140 recommendations.
“I have seen again and again across my life a propensity for us to tick things off. We’ve ‘done’ sex harassment, tick, we’ve done childcare, tick, like equal pay. We have to just keep up this momentum and pressure.”
As well as Queensland initiatives such as increasing penalties and making non-lethal strangulation a criminal offence, states across the country are reviewing policies to better protect women and children.
Victoria is holding a royal commission and there are expectations that the federal government will take further initiatives. There is also pressure on Canberra to reverse announced funding cuts to community organisations and legal centres.
Both Bryce and Broderick said the heart of the issue was gender inequality and that education programs from an early age were critical. Scandinavian nations with greater equality between men and women had less domestic violence, Broderick said.
“Its not alcohol, it’s not ice, it’s not poverty, at the heart of it is gender inequality,” she said.
A positive sign was that businesses that once considered the issue a private matter were now keen to be involved.
“I hear business saying ‘what is it that we can do?’. They might be the only place where a woman feels safe in her daily life.”
