Speaker 1: Our average day could be anything. We could be locking
Speaker 1: down our office because a man has gone and kidnaped
Speaker 1: one of our women and they're driving around the city streets.
Speaker 2: Colleena Morgan Wyman is the CEO of Elizabeth Morgan House,
Speaker 2: a refuge for First Nations women escaping violence.
Speaker 1: We could be having three to four crisis situations which
Speaker 1: we have to respond to, or we could be holding
Speaker 1: a safe space for women to come over to our
Speaker 1: Winna's hub. It's a four unit high secure refuge bill
Speaker 1: fourteen years ago and we have one crisis accommodation property.
Speaker 1: We could be fighting for children not to be removed
Speaker 1: from their parents. We could be going into lockdown because
Speaker 1: a lady has been placed into the hospital and her
Speaker 1: man has found out that we're supporting them.
Speaker 2: Aboriginal on Tyro straightlder women are thirty three times more
Speaker 2: likely to be victims of domestic violence and eight times
Speaker 2: more likely to be killed by their partner. And these
Speaker 2: sorry statistics don't seem like litting up anytime soon. Just
Speaker 2: last week, a twenty four year old pregnant Aboriginal woman
Speaker 2: was shot and killed by her ex partner in regional
Speaker 2: New South Wales. Family violence and Aboriginal communities is a
Speaker 2: national crisis, often made worse by the systems they seek
Speaker 2: help from, and people within those systems that often misidentify
Speaker 2: the victim as the perpetrator.
Speaker 1: Most of the time, what creates even more psychological trauma
Speaker 1: and stress to the women is the fact that they
Speaker 1: never ever know or informed about what is their journey
Speaker 1: through these services, what they can expect, and also where
Speaker 1: they can have the choice to have agency and make
Speaker 1: their own choices.
Speaker 2: Colleena's work is focused on changing that, on helping women
Speaker 2: get their agency back as they navigate the most difficult
Speaker 2: times in their lives. Her work is relentless and goes unheralded,
Speaker 2: but without people like her, things would be so much
Speaker 2: worse for women and families fleeing domestic violence. I'm Daniel James,
Speaker 2: and you're listening to seven AM today CEO of Elizabeth
Speaker 2: Morgan House Colleena Morgan Wyman on the issues confronting our
Speaker 2: most vulnerable, the tenuous funding environment for services like hers,
Speaker 2: and where the governments of all Persuasians are serious about
Speaker 2: addressing the family violence epidemic. It's Monday, January twenty sixth Colleena,
Speaker 2: thanks for speaking with me. By the time a woman
Speaker 2: comes into contact with your organization, how would you describe
Speaker 2: what they've been going through?
Speaker 1: They're escaping, they're actually escaping family violence, and they're sitting
Speaker 1: in parks or day long waiting for response to go
Speaker 1: into motil crisis accommodation. They may not have any money,
Speaker 1: they may not have phones. And we're the only statewide
Speaker 1: aboriginal service that is funded to give crisis accommodation program.
Speaker 1: It is a pilot program which is funded from the
Speaker 1: federal government. And Elizabeth Morgan House applied for this funding
Speaker 1: and the pilot program because there was evidence and there
Speaker 1: was women's experiences of further being damage going into the
Speaker 1: motel crisis accommodation.
Speaker 2: What as to the complexity of the cases of the
Speaker 2: people that you've seen, in particular Colenda and Elizabeth Morgan,
Speaker 2: Why are they deemed on the whole more complex.
Speaker 1: Because there's a whole range of issues that you have
Speaker 1: to be able to address before you get to family violence.
Speaker 1: Victim survivors are perpetrators, perpetrators are victim survivors, and family
Speaker 1: violence is becoming very complex. We've got AOD, we've got
Speaker 1: mental health, we've got homelessness. Any woman that has not
Speaker 1: been able to find safety or security when she's been
Speaker 1: in high levels of psychological distress are a lot harder
Speaker 1: to work with. We get handbled, very hard cases for
Speaker 1: women who may because when they're stressed, because when they're triggered,
Speaker 1: may actually choose to act in violence themselves. They might
Speaker 1: actually choose to damage property around them because they don't
Speaker 1: know any other way how to regulate their nervous system.
Speaker 1: The more damaged done to a woman's nervous system, it
Speaker 1: means the harder and more complex it is, because psychological
Speaker 1: trauma is just devastating.
Speaker 2: Why did you get into this type of work in
Speaker 2: the first place, Cleana, It's a legacy.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Morgan is my grandmother. And what you'll find is,
Speaker 1: if you know anything about the history in Victoria of
Speaker 1: the establishment of our Aboriginal organizations, is it all come
Speaker 1: from one place, the Aborigine Needs Advancement League. And that's
Speaker 1: when it was recognize that we needed to create our
Speaker 1: own services, to create cultural safe space for our people
Speaker 1: to get taken care of. And so we walk in
Speaker 1: the footsteps of giants. My nan Elizabeth Morgan was one
Speaker 1: of the longest serving directors in the Aborigines Advancement League.
Speaker 1: The formation of Elizabeth Morgan House wasn't just under ego
Speaker 1: we have an obligation to care for our women.
Speaker 2: Does the work ever let up clean? I mean, is
Speaker 2: it tough for you personally and a team personally to
Speaker 2: deal with that kind of trauma day in day out?
Speaker 1: It is really really hard. But what we do have
Speaker 1: to work a lot towards is being able to separate
Speaker 1: what is our personal trauma that we bring because every
Speaker 1: single Aboriginal woman has intergenerational trauma. We stand behind the
Speaker 1: work that we do. I think every other single organization
Speaker 1: in Victoria and Australia does. Who is a specialist Aboriginal
Speaker 1: women's family violence service? I think the most frustrating, traumatizing
Speaker 1: element of it that occurs with our workforce is the
Speaker 1: fact that when we identify that our states and our
Speaker 1: systems are the one letting our women down and they're failing.
Speaker 2: Us coming up the disconnect between announcements and outcomes.
Speaker 3: Violence against women is indeed a national crisis. We know
Speaker 3: that when on average, once every four days, a woman
Speaker 3: is murdered by someone they know, by an intimate partner
Speaker 3: or format partner, that is a national crisis.
Speaker 2: It's a scourgeon, it's a stain clina. We've seen successive
Speaker 2: governments try to address this issue, but at least fifty
Speaker 2: two women were violently killed last year according to the
Speaker 2: Counting Dead Women Australia Register. So what is going wrong?
Speaker 2: What is the government failing to do and what are
Speaker 2: we failing to do as a community to address this scourge.
Speaker 1: I think we have to look at the broader social
Speaker 1: issues that are occurring and really start calling things out.
Speaker 1: I know that there's a lot of focus on extremism
Speaker 1: these days and the government is very quick to jump
Speaker 1: to that, but what they're not comfortable doing is being
Speaker 1: able to identify and say straight out the extremeism of
Speaker 1: misogyny and gendered violence. Society value of women or Aboriginal
Speaker 1: women is very live.
Speaker 4: Well, it's a beautiful morning here on Gary's Eastern Beach,
Speaker 4: but it's a day marked by real grief and tragedy
Speaker 4: for the small, tight knit community here on the islands,
Speaker 4: but also.
Speaker 1: Most recently, the young lady who died on Gary Island
Speaker 1: yesterday afternoon.
Speaker 4: A floral tribute had been placed by loved ones of
Speaker 4: Piper on a sand dune overlooking the Struture Beach where
Speaker 4: her body was found.
Speaker 1: Around Do you know what was in all the comments?
Speaker 1: The comments were all about it's Fraser Island. It's Fraser Island.
Speaker 1: I believe where Australia is desensitized to the fact that children, families,
Speaker 1: communities have lost a woman and our society does not
Speaker 1: see it as a crisis. How are we addressing that?
Speaker 1: How are we addressing the value of lives of women?
Speaker 2: Where's the government falling short? Do you think they're fully
Speaker 2: committed to changing attitudes and ending the violence?
Speaker 1: I don't believe that government is one thousand percent committed
Speaker 1: to ending violence. The amount of ministers that have churned
Speaker 1: through the portfolio of family violence, they could last six months,
Speaker 1: they can last one year, they can last two years.
Speaker 1: We might meet them and we might brief them and
Speaker 1: they might come across what they have to do as
Speaker 1: a minister to address family violence. There is no one
Speaker 1: minister that has the ability to really commit themselves to
Speaker 1: what ending family violence is. That is the biggest problem. Furthermore,
Speaker 1: states aren't getting down and doing the dirty work. We
Speaker 1: recently found out that Victoria put in a bit to
Speaker 1: host what they call the Women Deliver Conference. Women Deliver
Speaker 1: is an international brand, it's an international organization in America.
Speaker 1: Whatever country is hosting that conference will make an announcement
Speaker 1: about their investment into gender equity. Yet Victoria does not
Speaker 1: have a plan for gender equity and justice for Aboriginal women.
Speaker 1: We can spare millions and millions of dollars on the
Speaker 1: treaty process, We can spare millions of dollars on hosting
Speaker 1: a Women Deliver conference, Yet Victoria or Australia has not
Speaker 1: come to any Aboriginal group women's to say this is
Speaker 1: the announcement that we're going to make at the Women
Speaker 1: Deliver Conference. This is the investment that we're going to
Speaker 1: make for grassroots gender equity. But it's about time that
Speaker 1: the state starts naming and defining state violence and systems violence,
Speaker 1: because that is the biggest impact to our women and communities.
Speaker 2: Can you elaborate on that a little bit cleaner?
Speaker 1: For example, what we can say is they've recently rolled
Speaker 1: back the bar law reforms in Victoria. They were first
Speaker 1: made as Pockham's Law and our women felt safe with
Speaker 1: these laws. It's moved by the Victorian government is an
Speaker 1: explicit decision to criminalize and.
Speaker 2: Cage Aboriginal people.
Speaker 4: We are already the most incarcerated.
Speaker 1: Now they've rolled them back and more women are sitting
Speaker 1: in there with their bowl tests. We've got high rates
Speaker 1: of misidentification. There's more women sitting in jail, and ninety
Speaker 1: percent of them or victims to family violence. Misidentification happens
Speaker 1: because police officers aren't able to differentiate between the perpetrator
Speaker 1: or the victim survivor, and they apply this reasonable person's test,
Speaker 1: So police officers are trained for what would a colleague
Speaker 1: in this situation do as a reasonable response. Any person
Speaker 1: that is found to be emotionally unstable in hysterics are
Speaker 1: often painted as the person who is the perpetrator, while
Speaker 1: mostly the perpetrator is a narcissist and they have the
Speaker 1: ability to manipulate and to psychologically present themselves in a
Speaker 1: way where they're calm and they're a reasonable person. And
Speaker 1: we have got so many case studies of women's lives
Speaker 1: being torn apart because of misidentification.
Speaker 2: And so much The funding for your program Cleaner is
Speaker 2: pilot funding. What happens to the women your supporting when
Speaker 2: that pilot funding runs out?
Speaker 1: Well, we have one pilot program that's through the federal government,
Speaker 1: which was our pilot crisis accommodation program. When we get
Speaker 1: to June thirty, we don't have the crisis Accommodation program anymore.
Speaker 1: We don't have our intake program anymore. The majority of
Speaker 1: our ferals comes from the Aboriginal Housing entry point for homelessness,
Speaker 1: but those organizations that run that program do not have
Speaker 1: any housing or crisis accommodation within their stock or assets.
Speaker 1: We get all the phone calls from that housing entry point.
Speaker 1: We are the first porter core. So we're holding up
Speaker 1: the homelessness element of crisis accommodation in Victoria. So it's
Speaker 1: going to end up that those organizations where the housing
Speaker 1: point is, they will have no program or no crisis
Speaker 1: accommodation to refer to. And they are at the times
Speaker 1: when women are at their most crucial. Our women are homeless,
Speaker 1: Our women have no homes to escape to. It's actually
Speaker 1: at a point in having them leave and not return
Speaker 1: to family violence, and it's the crucial parts of where
Speaker 1: the most harm will be done.
Speaker 2: And finally, Klena, with all of that in mind, and
Speaker 2: with the experience both of yourself and of your family
Speaker 2: and the people that have been involved in Elizabeth Morgan
Speaker 2: House throughout the generations. Are things getting better or worse?
Speaker 1: They're actually getting worse. What we actually see is that
Speaker 1: the increase of damage to our women's nervous system from
Speaker 1: trauma makes it so much harder to recover and to
Speaker 1: lead their whole life of journey. The state government has
Speaker 1: not increased their funding or changed their policy model to
Speaker 1: go isn't just about crisis funding. This is about getting
Speaker 1: to recovery and then what does healing mean? And there's
Speaker 1: a whole continuum that goes along that line. And being
Speaker 1: funded for seventy one one on one canceling sessions in
Speaker 1: a whole financial year for how many women we know
Speaker 1: have intergenerational trauma, have trauma from violence, have trauma from parenting.
Speaker 1: How are we supposed to support our women to live
Speaker 1: life to the fullest, to live life free from violence
Speaker 1: if state governments and federal governments aren't going to invest
Speaker 1: in recovery and in healing.
Speaker 2: Glena, thank you so much for your time. If this
Speaker 2: has raised issues for you or someone you know, please
Speaker 2: call the National Sexual Assault, Family and Domestic Violence Counseling
Speaker 2: Line on one eight hundred seven three seven seven three
Speaker 2: who also in the news. Greg Moriarty will be the
Speaker 2: next Ambassador to the United States, replacing outgoing Ambassador Kevin Rudd.
Speaker 2: Moriarty has served as Defense Secretary for nearly a decade,
Speaker 2: was chief of staff to Malcolm Turbul when he was
Speaker 2: Prime Minister, and has served as ambassador to Indonesia and Iran.
Speaker 2: He is the first non political appointee in more than
Speaker 2: fifteen years. An immigration and Customs enforcement agents have shot
Speaker 2: and killed a thirty seven year old intensive care nurse
Speaker 2: in Minneapolis, sparking a further round of protests in the city.
Speaker 2: Federal agents have attempted to betray the man they killed
Speaker 2: as a domestic terrorist who wanted to kill law enforcement,
Speaker 2: but the man, Alex Jeffrey Pretty, was described by the
Speaker 2: Minneapolis police chief as a US citizen with no criminal record.
Speaker 2: The New York Times has reviewed videos of the arrest
Speaker 2: that show he was at armed, despite claims from Ice
Speaker 2: that he pulled a weapon on them. We're planning a
Speaker 2: full report on the situation in Minneapolis and the broader
Speaker 2: Ice cracked down for later this week. I'm Daniel James.
Speaker 2: This is seven AM. Thanks for listening.