Speaker 1: News stories about violence against women have been coming hard
Speaker 1: and fast these past few weeks. These stories of women
Speaker 1: and sometimes children killed, usually by a man they knew,
Speaker 1: and often in a terribly violent way, are hard to read.
Speaker 1: I find myself torn between not wanting to know about
Speaker 1: the particular horrors of another death and seeking all the
Speaker 1: information I can get so that maybe I can work
Speaker 1: out how we've ended up here. Why it is that
Speaker 1: all the education campaigns and talk of respect for women
Speaker 1: seems to make no difference, and every few days another
Speaker 1: woman dies. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven AM and
Speaker 1: today I'm talking to Australia's Sex Discrimination Commissioner, doctor Anna
Speaker 1: Coody about why our domestic violence problem is getting worse.
Speaker 1: It's Monday, July twenty.
Speaker 2: Two, doctor Cody.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak
Speaker 1: with me today.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Ruby.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: I believe that you were last on seven AM when
Speaker 1: you'd just begun as commissioner, so a year ago now,
Speaker 1: and it strikes me that it would be a tough
Speaker 1: time to be Sex Discrimination Commissioner, because it's a hard
Speaker 1: time to be a woman in Australia. At the moment,
Speaker 1: fifty two women have been killed by men just in
Speaker 1: the first half of this year, and there have been
Speaker 1: several terrible killings in recent weeks. Why do you think
Speaker 1: 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 way,
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 1: 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 haph has it, it's
Speaker 3: alcohol related, drug relate, and in some ways it's the
Speaker 3: same violence but it just tips over into homicide. And
Speaker 3: then there's the other where there's the course of control.
Speaker 3: We're sort of typified by a typical white, middle class
Speaker 3: professional men. And the third scenario is where someone's had
Speaker 3: a crisis in their life. So it's often older men,
Speaker 3: for example, They've had a mental health incident or had
Speaker 3: a particularly difficult sort of crisis in their life and
Speaker 3: then they sort of go downhill and then suddenly kill.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a bit more about what the government is
Speaker 1: trying to do. It was elected partly on this platform
Speaker 1: to address violence against women, and it has a plan.
Speaker 1: It's the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children.
Speaker 1: It was launched almost two years ago. Now with this
Speaker 1: target of reducing female intimate partner homicides by twenty five
Speaker 1: percent each year, we're obviously not even close to being
Speaker 1: on track for an outcome like that. So tell me
Speaker 1: what you think of the National Plan.
Speaker 3: National plan in its self has good objectives. It's how
Speaker 3: we implement it. We really need to see a decent
Speaker 3: investment of money policy change as well. While the ending
Speaker 3: Violence payment that the government announced in its most recent
Speaker 3: budget 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 fourteen, then
Speaker 3: she's stuck with the unemployment benefit and that is not
Speaker 3: a living support system. So that needs to change, so
Speaker 3: that some of the ongoing supports within the social security
Speaker 3: system need to change in order to support women leaving
Speaker 3: violent relationships. We've seen one of the best ways of
Speaker 3: reducing domestic and family violence in First Nations communities is
Speaker 3: to involve First Nations women and First Nations men and
Speaker 3: communities in designing the measures that are needed. So, for example,
Speaker 3: we've seen in just reinvestment projects in Marangurka and Burke
Speaker 3: a reduction in domestic and family violence by thirty percent
Speaker 3: in that community. Those are the sorts of holistic responses
Speaker 3: that the National Plan is supportive of. It's recognizing the
Speaker 3: handing over of some of that control and ensuring that
Speaker 3: First Nations communities and first nations women are instrumental, are
Speaker 3: at the center of design.
Speaker 1: And something that we've heard a lot from the Prime
Speaker 1: Minister and others is that domestic violence is a cultural issue.
Speaker 1: That we need to address attitudes towards women in society
Speaker 1: in order to address domestic violence. And we've had ad
Speaker 1: campaigns around that, around respect being the starting point, and
Speaker 1: those campaigns, I mean, they are heartwarming, they're certainly well intentioned,
Speaker 1: but should we be asking the question now 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 twenty two showed that there was a shift in
Speaker 3: some of those attitudes. But the most recent statistics are
Speaker 3: horrific and we know that Australia, you know, of the
Speaker 3: OECD countries where the eighth worst in terms of the
Speaker 3: G twenty countries. So we have a serious problem with this.
Speaker 1: Do you think we need to make an ideological shift then,
Speaker 1: to change the way that we as a country think
Speaker 1: about and talk about domestic violence.
Speaker 3: If we think about a similar threat, if we think
Speaker 3: think 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 1: And let's talk more about this idea that we should
Speaker 1: treat domestic violence with the same urgency as we treat
Speaker 1: domestic terrorism. That's a concept that Rosie Baddy first raised
Speaker 1: when her son was killed by his father eleven years ago. Now,
Speaker 1: the idea of family terrorism. And I suppose when you
Speaker 1: think about terrorism, the idea or the fear there is
Speaker 1: that a terror attack could affect any person, so the
Speaker 1: innocent public is at risk. But there is this common
Speaker 1: perception that domestic violence isn't a public risk, that it's
Speaker 1: a personal one. And that sort of goes to the
Speaker 1: heart of the issue, doesn't that people don't necessarily see
Speaker 1: domestic violence as something that could happen to them or
Speaker 1: to someone that they know until it does.
Speaker 3: And yet we know it. We all know people, all
Speaker 3: of us in our families got family members who've experienced
Speaker 3: domestic and family violence. It is prevalent. We know it
Speaker 3: touches all of our lives, and yet we want to
Speaker 3: believe that it doesn't, that it is someone else somewhere else,
Speaker 3: and it's not. It is absolutely an intrinsic part across
Speaker 3: all classes, across all cultures. Then maybe it is that
Speaker 3: fear of it impacting on us, And I think a
Speaker 3: lack of drawing connections between even if it doesn't affect
Speaker 3: us personally, how it may affect our children, or the
Speaker 3: way in which our society functions and thinks about the
Speaker 3: role of women and the role of men, and how
Speaker 3: limiting it is for men if they you know, I
Speaker 3: think there's a continuum in terms of our very gendered
Speaker 3: ideas and stereotypes around what is masculinity and what is femininity.
Speaker 3: Those are constraining for men and boys, so deeply constraining
Speaker 3: and leads to things like really bad mental health statistics
Speaker 3: for men. So we know that there's a complex way
Speaker 3: in which domestic and family violence, driven by some of
Speaker 3: those really gendered, rigid ideas, impacts on all of us.
Speaker 3: But maybe we're not the one being physically hurt or
Speaker 3: emotionally hurt, but we are impacted in our society, all
Speaker 3: of us by the prevalence of domestic and family violence.
Speaker 1: And making this kind of ideological shift to thinking about
Speaker 1: domestic violence as akin to terrorism, that would seem to
Speaker 1: me to mean that we would then be asking that
Speaker 1: law enforcement would take a harder line on violence against women,
Speaker 1: so police would perhaps have more resources or more power.
Speaker 1: Given some of the significant failings that we've seen from
Speaker 1: police when it comes to domestic violence. Do you think
Speaker 1: that it's a good idea for law enforcement to have
Speaker 1: more of a role in this space.
Speaker 3: I think depending on how law and were to use
Speaker 3: those powers. I think acting on breaches of our prind
Speaker 3: of violence orders is really significant. But I also think
Speaker 3: what we saw in Burke in the Mari Andngooga project
Speaker 3: was actually police working cooperatively with community responding to what
Speaker 3: they identified. So it was very much a collaborative response
Speaker 3: rather than a punitive response, and so I think we
Speaker 3: have to reimagine rather than a law and order rather
Speaker 3: police serving the community type of response. It must be
Speaker 3: really hard to be a police officer going to domestic
Speaker 3: violence incidents on such a frequent basis. I would think
Speaker 3: that would be a really difficult part of their work.
Speaker 3: But I think it is about training people to have
Speaker 3: an empathy and an understanding, being able to properly identify
Speaker 3: who the victim is, having an agendaed understanding of how
Speaker 3: domestic and family violence plays out, having the complexity of
Speaker 3: understanding around cultural and racial implications within domestic family violence,
Speaker 3: as 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 1: So Anna, do you have faith that the current government
Speaker 1: has the right priorities in their sites when it comes
Speaker 1: to gendered violence and that they're going to invest in
Speaker 1: 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's the Prime Minister, as is the
Speaker 3: Attorney General who has reviewed the family law system. We
Speaker 3: know that family law system is also functioned to keep
Speaker 3: women in violent relationships. So yes, I am. I am
Speaker 3: hopeful with some of the measures, but we need to
Speaker 3: see in the MAIFO and as a result of the
Speaker 3: rapid review that the government has announced, we need to
Speaker 3: see some really concrete and large scale investments in this area.
Speaker 1: Anna, thank you so much for your time, Pleasure Ruby.
Speaker 3: If you or.
Speaker 1: Someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, the one eight
Speaker 1: hundred Respect Hotline is available twenty four hours a day
Speaker 1: one eight hundred seven three seven seven three to two.
Speaker 1: Also in the news today, Donald Trump has made his
Speaker 1: first appearance at a campaign rally since the attempt on
Speaker 1: his life last weekend. During his speech, he distanced himself
Speaker 1: from the conservative think tank Project twenty twenty five, which
Speaker 1: has set out an agenda for the Trump presidency. Project
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five has been criticized for its authoritarian goals,
Speaker 1: including an expansion of presidential power, a dismount of federal agencies,
Speaker 1: and a dramatic increase of America's military capability. In his speech,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump said I don't know anything about it. I
Speaker 1: don't want to know anything about it, and Australians have
Speaker 1: been worn to exercise caution as scammers try to capitalize
Speaker 1: on the CrowdStrike triggered computer outages. The Home Affairs Minister
Speaker 1: Clara O'Neill said individuals and small businesses had been receiving
Speaker 1: emails from people pretending to be CrowdStrike or Microsoft in
Speaker 1: order to gain access to private information, including bank details.
Speaker 1: Microsoft has estimated that the outage impacted roughly eight point
Speaker 1: five million computers around the world. I'm Ruby Jones. This
Speaker 1: is seven am. See tomorrow