Speaker 1: I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM. Earlier
Speaker 1: this month, in the space of just three days, four
Speaker 1: women and girls in Australia were allegedly killed by men
Speaker 1: and boys known to them. Among them a thirteen year
Speaker 1: old Layla j Jeffrey, whose body was found in bush
Speaker 1: Lane and Regional Victoria. A sixteen year old boy she
Speaker 1: knew three friends has been charged with her murder. In
Speaker 1: the Northern Territory, a seventeen year old girl was allegedly
Speaker 1: killed by a thirty four year old man who she'd
Speaker 1: been in a domestic relationship with. In Twomber, thirty year
Speaker 1: old Janna Armstrong, the mother of a four month old baby,
Speaker 1: disappeared from her home. Her former partner has been charged
Speaker 1: with her murder. And in Melbourne, Lavanya Chapper was allegedly
Speaker 1: murdered by her husband while her two children were in
Speaker 1: the house. Two months ago. The Prime Minister resisted calls
Speaker 1: for a Royal commission into domestic violence.
Speaker 2: Will we see this royal commission.
Speaker 3: As calls for royal commission about everything.
Speaker 1: But women and girls continue to be killed times within
Speaker 1: hours of one another. Today, we're bringing you an episode
Speaker 1: from twenty twenty four, where Ruby Janes speaks to Australia's
Speaker 1: Sex Discrimination Commissioner, doctor Anna Cody about why our domestic
Speaker 1: violence crisis is getting worse and why years of plans,
Speaker 1: campaigns and promises have failed to stop it. It's Sunday,
Speaker 1: July nineteen. This episode was originally published in July twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four.
Speaker 2: Doctor Cody. Thank you so much for taking the time
Speaker 2: to speak with me today here, Ruby. So I believe
Speaker 2: that you were last on seven AM when you'd just
Speaker 2: begun as Commissioner, so a year ago now, and it
Speaker 2: strikes me that it would be a tough time to
Speaker 2: be Sex Discrimination Commissioner, because it's a hard time to
Speaker 2: be a woman in Australia at the moment. Fifty two
Speaker 2: women have been killed by men just in the first
Speaker 2: half of this year, and there have been several terrible
Speaker 2: killings in recent weeks. Why do you think this is happening?
Speaker 3: I agree it is a really hard time to be
Speaker 3: a woman in Australia right now. When I hear of
Speaker 3: another homicide, I feel shocked. I feel I find it
Speaker 3: deeply upsetting to hear of another woman who has been
Speaker 3: killed in some of the most sadistic and horrific ways,
Speaker 3: and now in a position of responsibility for trying to
Speaker 3: make some change in that, I feel that as a weight.
Speaker 3: I definitely feel that as I have a responsibility to
Speaker 3: try and make as much change as I can, really
Speaker 3: trying to understand what policies need to change and how
Speaker 3: I can influence that policy change. So it's both personal
Speaker 3: and then it's sort of like, I've got this real
Speaker 3: responsibility to do something about this. How can I do this?
Speaker 2: And do you feel like you understand why men kill women?
Speaker 3: I think I have glimpses of it. I think the
Speaker 3: fundamental cause is gender inequality and very rigid stereotypes values norms.
Speaker 3: But that doesn't mean all men kill all that all
Speaker 3: domestic and family violence ends in homicide. So the actual
Speaker 3: homicide part of it, The evidence is that there's three categories.
Speaker 3: Some who it's more sort of hap hazard, it's alcohol related,
Speaker 3: drug related, and in some ways it's the same violence
Speaker 3: but it just tips over into homicide. And then there's
Speaker 3: the other where there's the course of control we're sort
Speaker 3: of typified by a typical white, middle class professional men.
Speaker 3: And the third scenario is where someone's had a crisis
Speaker 3: in their life. So it's often older men, for example,
Speaker 3: They've had a mental health incident or had a particularly
Speaker 3: difficult sort of crisis in their life, and then they
Speaker 3: sort of go downhill and then suddenly kill.
Speaker 2: Let's talk a bit more about what the government is
Speaker 2: trying to do. It was elected partly on this platform
Speaker 2: to address violence against women, and it has a plan.
Speaker 2: It'snational Plan to End Violence against Women and Children. It
Speaker 2: was launched almost two years ago. Now with this target
Speaker 2: of reducing female intimate partner homicides by twenty five percent
Speaker 2: each year, we're obviously not even close to being on
Speaker 2: track for an outcome like that, So tell me what
Speaker 2: you think of the National Plan.
Speaker 3: National plan in itself has good objectives, it's how we
Speaker 3: implement it. We really need to see a decent investment
Speaker 3: of money policy change as well. While the ending Violence
Speaker 3: payment that the government announced in its most recent budget
Speaker 3: is a one off and welcome response, it's not enough.
Speaker 3: We need to change some of the ways in which
Speaker 3: social security gets measured. So assuming that income is shared
Speaker 3: in a family in a couple is a wrong assumption.
Speaker 3: That doesn't happen in violent relationships. Income is not shared
Speaker 3: and we also know that the unemployment benefit is absolutely insufficient.
Speaker 3: So for any woman who's got children over four ten,
Speaker 3: then she's stuck with the unemployment benefit and that is
Speaker 3: not a living support system, So that needs to change,
Speaker 3: so that some of the ongoing supports within the social
Speaker 3: security system need to change in order to support women
Speaker 3: leaving violent relationships. We've seen that one of the best
Speaker 3: ways of reducing domestic and family violence in First Nations
Speaker 3: communities is to involve First Nations women and First Nations
Speaker 3: men and communities in designing the measures that are needed. So,
Speaker 3: for example, we've seen in just reinvestment projects in Marangoka
Speaker 3: and Burke a reduction in domestic and family violence by
Speaker 3: thirty percent in that community. Those are the sorts of
Speaker 3: holistic responses that the National Plan is supportive of. It's
Speaker 3: recognizing the handing over of some of that control and
Speaker 3: ensuring that First Nations communities and First Nations women are instrumental,
Speaker 3: are at the center of design.
Speaker 2: And something that we've heard a lot from the Prime
Speaker 2: Minister and others is that domestic violence is a cultural
Speaker 2: issue that we need to address attitudes towards women in
Speaker 2: society in order to address domestic violence, and we've had
Speaker 2: ad campaigns around that, around respect being the starting point,
Speaker 2: and those campaigns, I mean, they are heartwarming, they're certainly
Speaker 2: well intentioned, but should we be asking the question now
Speaker 2: are they working?
Speaker 3: We need to do more research on what actually works
Speaker 3: for behavior change. What we want to see is behavior change.
Speaker 3: We need to understand what is it that we actually
Speaker 3: need to do to stop that homicide. Absolutely, we need
Speaker 3: to also change attitudes and values, and some of the
Speaker 3: statistics coming out of the Personal Safety Survey in twenty
Speaker 3: one to twenty two showed that there was a shift
Speaker 3: in some of those attitudes. But the most recent statistics
Speaker 3: are horrific. And we know that Australia, you know, of
Speaker 3: the OECD countries where the eighth worst in terms of
Speaker 3: the G twenty countries. So we have a serious problem
Speaker 3: with this.
Speaker 2: Do you think we need to make an ideological shift then,
Speaker 2: to change the way that we as a country think
Speaker 2: about and talk about domestic violence.
Speaker 3: If we think about a similar threat, if we think
Speaker 3: of up to forty women depending on how we count,
Speaker 3: who have been killed this year and we're only just
Speaker 3: halfway through how many women have been killed, and the
Speaker 3: investment that we put into that, and there has been
Speaker 3: a substantial investment, but is that enough? But if we
Speaker 3: do draw an analogy with what sort of resources go
Speaker 3: into addressing terrorism, for example, and how many people have
Speaker 3: been killed by terrorism in Australia in the last five years,
Speaker 3: we have a huge investment in anti terrorism actions, do
Speaker 3: we have an equivalent investment in anti domestic and family violence?
Speaker 3: So I think we do need to think about it
Speaker 3: differently in recognizing how it is intrinsic. It's intrinsic to
Speaker 3: how we are in Australia and that's a horrible thing
Speaker 3: to acknowledge. So how do we stop it? How do
Speaker 3: we stop it being a part of the identity of
Speaker 3: who we are as Australians.
Speaker 2: And let's talk more about this idea that we should
Speaker 2: treat domestic violence with the same urgency as we treat
Speaker 2: domestic terrorism. That's a concept that Rosy Baddy first raised
Speaker 2: when her son was killed by his father eleven years ago. Now,
Speaker 2: the idea of family terrorism. And I suppose when you
Speaker 2: think about terrorism, the idea or the fear there is
Speaker 2: that a terror attack could affect any person, So the
Speaker 2: innocent public is at risk. But there is this common
Speaker 2: perception that astic violence isn't a public risk, but it's
Speaker 2: a personal one. And that sort of goes to the
Speaker 2: heart of the issue, doesn't that people don't necessarily see
Speaker 2: domestic violence as something that could happen to them or
Speaker 2: to someone that they know until it does.
Speaker 3: And yet we know we all know people, all of
Speaker 3: us in our families. We've all got family members who've
Speaker 3: experienced domestic and family violence. It is prevalent. We know
Speaker 3: it touches all of our lives, and yet we want
Speaker 3: to believe that it doesn't, that it is someone else
Speaker 3: somewhere else, and it's not. It is absolutely an intrinsic
Speaker 3: part across all classes, across all cultures. And maybe it
Speaker 3: is that fear of it impacting on us, and I
Speaker 3: think a lack of drawing connections between even if it
Speaker 3: doesn't affect us personally, how it may affect our children,
Speaker 3: or the way in which our society functions and thinks
Speaker 3: about the role of women and the role of men,
Speaker 3: and how limiting it is for men if they you know,
Speaker 3: I think there's a continuum in terms of our very
Speaker 3: gendered ideas and stereotypes around what is masculinity and what
Speaker 3: is femininity. Those are constraining for men and boys, so
Speaker 3: deeply constraining and leads to things like really bad mental
Speaker 3: health statistics for men. So we know that there's a
Speaker 3: complex way in which domestic and family violence, driven by
Speaker 3: some of those really gendered, rigid ideas, impacts on all
Speaker 3: of us. But maybe we're not the one being physically
Speaker 3: hurt or emotionally hurt, but we are impacted in our society,
Speaker 3: all of us by the prevalence of domestic and family violence.
Speaker 2: And making this kind of ideological shift to thinking about
Speaker 2: domestic violence as akin to terrorism, that would seem to
Speaker 2: me to mean that we would then be asking that
Speaker 2: law enforcement would take a harder line on violence against women,
Speaker 2: so police would perhaps have more resources, on more power.
Speaker 2: Given some of the significant failings that we've seen from
Speaker 2: police when it comes to domestic violence, do you think
Speaker 2: that it's a good idea for law enforcement to have
Speaker 2: more of a role in this space.
Speaker 3: I think depending on how law enforcement were to use
Speaker 3: those powers. I think acting on breaches of that prind
Speaker 3: of violence orders is really significant. But I also think
Speaker 3: what we saw in Burke in the Marangooga project was
Speaker 3: actually police working cooperatively with community responding to what they identified.
Speaker 3: So it was very much a collaborative response rather than
Speaker 3: a punitive response, and so I think we have to
Speaker 3: reimagine rather than a law and order rather police serving
Speaker 3: the community type of response. It must be really hard
Speaker 3: to be a police officer going to domestic violence incidents
Speaker 3: on such a frequent basis. I would think that would
Speaker 3: be a really difficult part of their work. But I
Speaker 3: think it is about training people to have an empathy
Speaker 3: and an understanding, being able to properly identify who the
Speaker 3: victim is, having a gendered understanding of how domestic and
Speaker 3: family violence plays out, having the complexity of understanding around
Speaker 3: cultural and racial implications within domestic and family violence, as
Speaker 3: well as LGBQTR plus so there's a lot of training.
Speaker 3: So I don't I wouldn't assume it was a more
Speaker 3: punitive law and order approach.
Speaker 2: So Anna, do you have faith that the current government
Speaker 2: has the right priorities in their sites when it comes
Speaker 2: to gendered violence and that they're going to invest in
Speaker 2: the way that we need to see.
Speaker 3: I think this government and I know that the Minister
Speaker 3: for Women, Katie Gallahay, is deeply committed to change in
Speaker 3: this area as it is the Prime Minister, as is
Speaker 3: the Attorney General who has reviewed the family law system.
Speaker 3: We know that family law system is also functioned to
Speaker 3: keep women in violent relationships. So yes, I am. I
Speaker 3: am hopeful with some of the measures, but we need
Speaker 3: to see in the MAFO and as a result of
Speaker 3: the rapid review that the government has announced, we need
Speaker 3: to see some really concrete and large scale investments in
Speaker 3: this area.
Speaker 2: And thank you so much for your time, Pleasure Ruby.
Speaker 2: If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence,
Speaker 2: the one eight hundred Respect Hotline is available twenty four
Speaker 2: hours a day one eight hundred seven three seven seven
Speaker 2: three to two.
Speaker 1: Tomorrow at seven am, more than a dozen insiders speak
Speaker 1: out against their former colleague culste So what did I
Speaker 1: really say about Nine's X posted boy in his podcast Pivot?
Speaker 4: He was very good even back then at sucking up
Speaker 4: to the right people, the execs. There was one particular
Speaker 4: News and Current Affairs director who was visiting Brisbane and
Speaker 4: there was an afterwork drinks you know. He said, I
Speaker 4: just heard this voice behind me just really just talking
Speaker 4: himself up to the point of tedium, and I after
Speaker 4: about five minutes of listening to his dissertation on why
Speaker 4: he was so wonderful and excellent. I sort of turned
Speaker 4: around to Lee Anderson, the news director, and said, who
Speaker 4: the hell's this blow, and Lisa said, oh, this is
Speaker 4: our new boy Wonder, and that's when he said, well,
Speaker 4: he might be your boy Wonder, but he's a twenty
Speaker 4: four carrot fuck wit.
Speaker 1: It'll be in your seat tomorrow. I'm Vaniel James. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to seven AM.