The former National party senator Bill O’Chee says women are being given a “free pass” by police on domestic violence and are just as capable as men of killing, “especially when children are involved”.
O’Chee, a columnist for Fairfax Media’s Brisbane Times, wrote that equal opportunity for women meant equal responsibility for their actions, especially criminal ones, but police were failing to prosecute them for acts of domestic violence.
Citing the stabbing murder of eight children in Cairns by the mother of seven of them, the woman who allegedly dumped her baby in a drain and a woman who was charged with attempted murder of two children after allegedly setting a house on fire, O’Chee said it proved “domestic violence is an equal opportunity killer”.
“Women are just as capable of killing in domestic circumstances as men, especially when children are involved,” he said.
O’Chee said he had a solicitor friend who “ruefully” did not charge one woman with domestic violence when he was a police prosecutor.
“Upon reflection, he agreed there was an inherent bias in the way police treated female perpetrators of domestic violence. They usually get a free pass,” he wrote.
“The problem with this is that we know people who commit acts of domestic violence are likely to escalate their crimes over time, unless they are brought in check. It follows that every time Queensland police give a woman a free pass on domestic violence, because she is a woman, they may be creating a future domestic killer.”
O’Chee cited statistics from the Australian Institute of Criminology that show more than 45% of family-related murders of children between 2008 and 2010 were committed by the mother.
Data from various sources shows that on average one woman is killed every week in a domestic violence situation. Four out of five intimate-partner homicides involve a man killing his female partner, data from White Ribbon Australia shows.
Data from the Department of Families, Housing and Community Affairs show 64% of women who experienced physical assault and 81.1% of women who experienced sexual assault did not report it to police.
The chairwoman of the Women’s Electoral Lobby, Melanie Fernandez, called O’Chee’s comments irresponsible.
“Statistics clearly show the victims are mainly woman,” she said. “One woman a week is killed by a partner or ex partner – it’s not the same for male victims.”
Fernandez singled out O’Chee’s comment that women were just as capable as killing in a domestic situation as “just not accurate”.
“It’s pretty disappointing to see something like this published without a balanced or accurate view; it’s quite problematic. We’ve got such a big problem of violence against women. To put something forward like this decreases the serious nature of that,” she said.
O’Chee, a Queensland senator between 1990 and 1999, was especially critical of police, who he claimed repeatedly were failing to prosecute women over domestic violence.
“They have no right to effectively condone domestic violence against men and children by refusing to charge offenders if they are women,” he wrote.
“If the police are happy to charge women with armed robbery, drug trafficking or extortion, why are they not equally willing to charge them with domestic and interpersonal violence?”
A bill was introduced into Queensland parliament last year to strengthen domestic violence laws. The parliamentary committee heard evidence of police telling victims to leave the house until the perpetrator had “calmed down”.
