When you strip away the emotion from the debate around family violence, you are left with the deplorable statistic that a quarter of all young people in Australia have witnessed violence towards their mother and more than one million children are affected each year by domestic violence.
On these figures it is feasible to argue that family violence is now a ‘common characteristic’ in Australian family life. Whilst we may be shocked by this, we also seemed paralysed by it.
The spiralling level of senseless, often hidden violence in our homes that agencies like mine are witnessing needs confronting and we should accept nothing less than a Royal Commission into the prevalence, treatment and prevention of family violence. It is time for governments of all persuasions to act. We have already seen great inroads achieved through the Royal Commission on Child Sexual Abuse, and crucially the same priority and attention needs to be brought on family violence in Australia.
Whilst over the last few months Victorians have witnessed three horrific and in some cases very public incidents of family violence-related homicides, it is the commonality of family violence that should worry governments into action.
We must protect families from violence.
Just under a half a million Australian women reported they had experienced physical or sexual violence or assault in the last twelve months, the rate of family incidents reported to police has grown by 68 percent; and the rate of charges laid for family violence has grown by 160 percent.
Though the most recent incidents have played out in public, behind the fences and walls of our suburban homes far too many families are living in fear. Children are traumatised by the frequent rages against the mothers by the significant male in the household, principally father or boyfriend, and child protection numbers nationally are spiralling as a result.
Governments often use the family to highlight or advocate the merits of their policies, yet on this matter governments seem ambivalent about delivering safe pathways for families at threat from violent dads, husbands or boyfriends. There is ambivalence on compliance to orders or treatments for violent men and ambivalence on offering the range of affordable alternative housing and exit pathways out of refuges for women.
Sure, these are difficult, complex problems, yet by not tackling these problems it is another type of abuse on the woman wanting to act and protect her children and herself. Tackling family violence is not an easy fix, but failure by governments to grasp the significance of the issue in Australian family life is institutional neglect and results in further dysfunction for us now and the next generation to come.
Any Royal Commission must be vigilant about ensuring recommendations that result from such a process are implemented. Welfare organisations like mine must take their place at the table with government, industry experts and the media at such an Inquiry into the prevalence and prevention of family violence in our communities. If we’re serious about the primacy of human dignity as a central tenet of our society, then we must tackle the issue front on. It does not need us to wait for the next battered child or battered wife to front up to our doors for help but to start somewhere and start now.
Paul McDonald
Chief Executive Officer
Anglicare Victoria
