Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: Since the election was announced just five weeks ago, at
Speaker 1: least five women have been killed by their partners in Australia,
Speaker 1: yet this crisis barely rated to mention in either of
Speaker 1: the two major parties campaigns. Doctor Tracy Westerman is a
Speaker 1: Nyama woman from the Pilber region of Western Australia. She's
Speaker 1: been working as a psychologist in remote communities for twenty
Speaker 1: five years, and she says where she works the silence
Speaker 1: from politicians has been especially deafening. For Aboriginal women. The
Speaker 1: threat of domestic violence is significantly higher, and yet the
Speaker 1: conclusions our political leaders draw about why that is are
Speaker 1: all wrong Today, Doctor Tracy Westerman, and what's really fueling
Speaker 1: intimate partner violence in Aboriginal communities are what needs to
Speaker 1: change to stop women being killed. It's Friday May too.
Speaker 1: You've been working as a psychologist set indigenous communities your
Speaker 1: entire career. Can you tell us about your experience working
Speaker 1: with women who have been victims of domestic violence?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think it's one of those things
Speaker 2: that the Aboriginal women are obviously we know by the
Speaker 2: data the most overrepresented in the intimate partner violence statistics,
Speaker 2: and so I think as a statistic that says thirty
Speaker 2: five times more likely to be victims of intimate partner violence,
Speaker 2: and that certainly hasn't decreased over time, In fact, it's
Speaker 2: actually gotten worse. The thing that I know, obviously is
Speaker 2: that Indigenous women feel consistently let down by the system.
Speaker 2: So I think you know, what we're actually saying a
Speaker 2: lot is Indigenous women often when they go into systems
Speaker 2: like police and welfare, for example, they often responded to
Speaker 2: in a way that increase the likelihood that they will
Speaker 2: not go back to those systems because often, for example,
Speaker 2: with police, we know that there's significant evidence that tells
Speaker 2: us that when Indigenous women go to the polace for help,
Speaker 2: they are more likely significally more likely to be erroneously
Speaker 2: labeled as to perpetrator rather than the victim. The other
Speaker 2: thing we know, of course, with child protection systems is
Speaker 2: that a massively growing cohort of Indigenous child removals is
Speaker 2: based on Indigenous women who are actually victims of into
Speaker 2: a partner violence having children removed as a result of
Speaker 2: exposing their children to violence. And so the big concern
Speaker 2: that we have here is that if you go to
Speaker 2: the systems that are supposed to protect and help you
Speaker 2: and they perpetuate the abuse, then who do you go
Speaker 2: to for help? Thanks everyone, and thanks for coming to Cambridge.
Speaker 1: So for Andrew who lives here, and so, given what
Speaker 1: you've just described, how did you feel when the Prime
Speaker 1: Minister committed the Labor Party to end gender based violence
Speaker 1: within a generation.
Speaker 2: We know that ending gender based violence is a priority
Speaker 2: for the common Wealth and for every single jurisdiction. Oh look,
Speaker 2: I think they're sort of retric It's like the zero
Speaker 2: suicide rhetory right in constet of goal. But unless you
Speaker 2: actually understand that, you need to one identify the most
Speaker 2: highest risk communities and those families that are generation carrying
Speaker 2: risk are actually identified. And the second thing is that
Speaker 2: the government literally are not funding prevention, so we need
Speaker 2: to get the data right. The australne Via Statistics did
Speaker 2: the biggest research into intimate partner violence in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: three in the country, and Indigenous women were excluded from
Speaker 2: that research. How do you forget Indigenous women right? What
Speaker 2: we know from that research was that most women stay
Speaker 2: with violent partners because they don't have the financial needs
Speaker 2: to leave. Now, that's common because if there's emotional abuse,
Speaker 2: physical abuse is also financial abuse because it's about control.
Speaker 2: So you've actually got the most vulnerable people in terms
Speaker 2: of the lowest socio economic category in this country, and
Speaker 2: then you've got cashleist welfare cards right that actually limits
Speaker 2: their ability to leave even more. Have the goal to
Speaker 2: call caciist welfare cards violence prevention. There is no program
Speaker 2: in this country that's going into high risk communities and
Speaker 2: actually addressing the causal pathways to why someone is one
Speaker 2: vulnerable is a victim, and two why someone becomes a
Speaker 2: perpetrator of violence. So what I'm talking about here is
Speaker 2: programs that are on the complex treatments side of the
Speaker 2: equation and things that I spend pretty much all day
Speaker 2: every day training people to be able to do. Governments,
Speaker 2: for example, have never mobilized an Indigenous intimate partner violence
Speaker 2: program into the Northern Territory, for example.
Speaker 1: So our Aboriginal stakeholders being worked with spoken to the
Speaker 1: development of, say the Labor Party strategy. Do you feel
Speaker 1: like you've been listened to?
Speaker 2: Oh? Look, I think what tends to happen is when
Speaker 2: I talk to government and politicians. They literally don't understand
Speaker 2: their subject matter. Well, people don't understand the definition prevention.
Speaker 2: And it's really it's frustrating for me as someone who's
Speaker 2: a subject matter expertter on, there's an Indigenous woman from
Speaker 2: the Pilgram. I've spent a long time, you know, working
Speaker 2: with complex trauma and issues in communities that you know,
Speaker 2: they're not actually consulting with me at all, and they're
Speaker 2: not For example, the grass for its services that are
Speaker 2: providing those real important support services to communities are now
Speaker 2: also being set upon as if they're not providing the
Speaker 2: services that critical services that community need. There is a
Speaker 2: lot of rhetoric that blames the victim a lot, and
Speaker 2: so yeah, it looks it's a shame that people aren't
Speaker 2: actually being listened to that actually have really good, clear
Speaker 2: subject matter expertise and what is a really complex issue.
Speaker 1: Can you have a guess as to why the government
Speaker 1: or the bureaucrats in the government aren't coming to speak
Speaker 1: to you about what is such an appalling and pressing issue.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you know, if I had a dollar
Speaker 2: for every time I ask that question Blande journalist, you know,
Speaker 2: and look that's I always say this up to government
Speaker 2: to respond to but look, I've got no answer for it.
Speaker 2: I've got no answer. Well, I think governments actually literally
Speaker 2: need to answer that question.
Speaker 1: After the break. The real reason governments keep having.
Speaker 3: Inquiries, Hi Ruby Jones. Here, seven Am tells stories that
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Speaker 1: Tracy just senter Price has claimed that violence is inherent
Speaker 1: in Aboriginal cultures.
Speaker 4: Suggests that violence is not used in traditional culture. Related
Speaker 4: to traditional culture and not impacting the rates of violence
Speaker 4: we see in communities and interpersonal violence now is to
Speaker 4: gas light the Australian public.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what the opposition's plans are when
Speaker 1: it comes to this particular field. What have you picked
Speaker 1: up from the opposition in terms of the way they're
Speaker 1: approaching the prevalence of intimate partner violence within indigenous communities.
Speaker 2: So I say this quite a lot that violence is
Speaker 2: not a black person issue. It's a human issue. So
Speaker 2: when you make violence about culture, then what you're doing
Speaker 2: is you're making systems racially profiling often the wrong perpetrators.
Speaker 2: So it's sexually what happens when you portray violence as
Speaker 2: just inherently in the Aboriginal culture. What's the solution? What's
Speaker 2: the solution? So the solution is assimilation. Right, if the
Speaker 2: culture is the bad guy, if the Aboriginal culture is evil, right,
Speaker 2: it is the cause of violence. The solution is an assimilation.
Speaker 2: And I think when you link, you know, culture with violence,
Speaker 2: and you actually are really clearly, you're actually cruly clearly
Speaker 2: stating that violence is an enter within the Aboriginal culture
Speaker 2: that never ends well in terms of it doesn't provide
Speaker 2: us with any opportunities for prevention. All it does is
Speaker 2: it demonizes and stereotypes, and it takes what is an
Speaker 2: incredibly complex issue to such a reductionist factor that you
Speaker 2: don't actually ensure ultimately that victims are safe. That's actually
Speaker 2: really concerning. And the other thing that's concerning is all
Speaker 2: we're hearing is really about indigenous organizations and the need
Speaker 2: to order indigenous organizations as if indigenous organizations aren't actually
Speaker 2: providing really effective grassroots programs. But yeah, that's the concern
Speaker 2: that's not just shared, that's just not mine. Its shared
Speaker 2: by a lot of Indigenous leaders.
Speaker 1: And we know the idea isn't based on evidence. So
Speaker 1: if we look at the evidence, what can we learn
Speaker 1: about how and why domestic violence happens in Indigenous communities?
Speaker 2: I mean it's difficult because based if people don't really
Speaker 2: understand the real complex dynamics of intimate partner violence. Right,
Speaker 2: So I look, as example, as a psychologist, the most
Speaker 2: dangerous offenders or what we refer to as opportunistic offenders,
Speaker 2: and what they're actually doing is they're trying to find
Speaker 2: the most vulnerable victim, so the victim that has the
Speaker 2: most power differential between the perpetrator and the victim. Now,
Speaker 2: there is no more vulnerable victim in this entire country
Speaker 2: than an Indigenous woman on the remote community. And so
Speaker 2: what the statistics have consistently told us is that Indigenous
Speaker 2: women have certain risk characteristics that make them significantly more
Speaker 2: vulnerable victims. We also need to understand that the data
Speaker 2: in this country, there is literally no database that actually
Speaker 2: links the ethnicity of the perpetrator with the ethnicity of
Speaker 2: the victim. Right, So there's literally no database that says, ay,
Speaker 2: our Aboriginal woman who's a victim of violence, was your
Speaker 2: perpetrator an Aboriginal man. So there is literally no data
Speaker 2: in this country that actually establishes the ethnicity of the
Speaker 2: perpetrator with the ethnicity of the victim. Now we look
Speaker 2: to the abs sense. The last one tells us that
Speaker 2: seventy two percent of Indigenous women are married to non
Speaker 2: Indigenous men.
Speaker 1: The coalition had thirteen inquiries into abuse in Indigenous communities
Speaker 1: during its last term. What's your view and why we
Speaker 1: continue to have inquiries rather than seeing action on the
Speaker 1: evidence that we already have and things like you've just
Speaker 1: laid out for us.
Speaker 2: Well, look, you know government's love inquiries, right, let's have
Speaker 2: another inquiry and you look at you know, my area
Speaker 2: of expertise predominantly a suicide prevention. We've had four government
Speaker 2: inquiries into the suicides in Wa, my own home state
Speaker 2: that has four times the child suicide right of the
Speaker 2: rest of the country. The latest data tells us that
Speaker 2: the Kimberly continues to have the highest rates of Indigenous
Speaker 2: suicide in the country by country mile. So that's what
Speaker 2: inquiries give us. You give us nothing. What actually happens
Speaker 2: is government love it because they feel you buy some time.
Speaker 2: They'll say, we'd love to be able to respond, but
Speaker 2: however we have to wait for that inquiry to finish. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: two years later, the violence is getting worse, the suicides
Speaker 2: are getting worse, and everything ultimately stays the same.
Speaker 1: If we were to look into a world where politicians
Speaker 1: were actually going to follow the evidence and do something
Speaker 1: about these unacceptably high rates of First Nations women being
Speaker 1: killed by their partners, what needs to change.
Speaker 2: So what needs to change first is we need to
Speaker 2: geomap the data. And that's pretty simple to do, right,
Speaker 2: We've sort of almost got that. So we need to
Speaker 2: actually understand where the communities are that are most overrepresented.
Speaker 2: And we've got about ten communities that we know in
Speaker 2: the Northern Territory that are consistently overrepresented. Then what you
Speaker 2: need to do is you need to go into those
Speaker 2: communities and geomap the highest risk families. So what you'll
Speaker 2: find this is what I found in terms of nearly
Speaker 2: thirty years of working in high risk communities you go
Speaker 2: into any region, So look at out of springs, you'd
Speaker 2: find that about ten to fifteen families at best for
Speaker 2: making up the bulk of the service provision. Right. Then
Speaker 2: what you'll find is if you work in this industry
Speaker 2: for long enough, you'll have a client, and that client
Speaker 2: will have children, and one of those children will become
Speaker 2: your client. And so that's what I mean in terms
Speaker 2: of actually addressing the generational transmission of trauma and risk
Speaker 2: is that trauma feeds trauma and so people like me
Speaker 2: know that, and we're going there to actually, you know,
Speaker 2: mobilize resources into those really identifiable families that are actually
Speaker 2: passing one generational risk because what's actually happening is they
Speaker 2: are making up the bulk of the statistics. So it's
Speaker 2: not all Aboriginal people in our springs are violent. You're
Speaker 2: probably looking at a couple of dozen Indigenous people that
Speaker 2: are making up the bulk of the intimate partner violent statistics,
Speaker 2: as you are with suicide prevention, as you are with
Speaker 2: child removals. And that's the thing in terms of why
Speaker 2: governments are frustrating because they don't take a clear, scientific,
Speaker 2: data based, an outcome based response to these issues.
Speaker 1: So Finally, doctor Westerman, given the rates of women dying
Speaker 1: in this country, why do you think that it is
Speaker 1: that this crisis barely rates and mention during the election campaign.
Speaker 2: The fact is that Indigenous women get no attention when
Speaker 2: it comes to being victims of violence. And I think
Speaker 2: the thing that I get a little bit frustrated around
Speaker 2: is sometimes there's this retoric that there's this silence around
Speaker 2: Indigenous violence and Indigenous communities, and people say that quite a lot,
Speaker 2: but Indigenous people have been screaming about this for decades,
Speaker 2: marching in the streets. There are incredible women who are
Speaker 2: CEOs of you, violence prevention organizations and shelters and all
Speaker 2: those sorts of things, and men as well, Indigenous men
Speaker 2: as well, who have for decades said we need to
Speaker 2: do something about the violence. It's not about the silence,
Speaker 2: it's about indifference to the screening.
Speaker 1: Doctor Westerman, thank you so much for your time. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Also in the news, the Coalition has revealed their costings
Speaker 1: just two days before the federal election, which they say
Speaker 1: shows the budget would be ten billion dollars better off
Speaker 1: under their government. The costings revealed that the savings mostly
Speaker 1: come from cutting forty one thousand Canberra based public service jobs.
Speaker 1: On the other side of the budget line, the coalition
Speaker 1: pledges twenty one billion dollars in defense, spending eight point
Speaker 1: five billion on Medicare, and just over one billion allowing
Speaker 1: first home buyers to claim mortgage interest on their tax returns.
Speaker 1: And former Vice President Kamala Harris is given a defiant
Speaker 1: public speech just as President Trump celebrates his first one
Speaker 1: hundred days in office. In her first major address in
Speaker 1: front of a crowd of Democrats in San Francisco, Harris
Speaker 1: criticized Trump's policies, urging Americans not to be fooling to
Speaker 1: thinking Trump is chaotic, but rather enacting an agenda that
Speaker 1: has been decades in the making. She also urged Americans
Speaker 1: to keep standing up for democracy. Harris is reportedly considering
Speaker 1: a return to politics. This has been seven am. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening, and we'll be providing you with election coverage
Speaker 1: over the weekend, including from the heart of Anthony Alberanese's
Speaker 1: election night function. So tune in and tell your friends