Acting to end gendered violence
By the Hon. Margaret McMurdo AC, chair of Legal Aid Queensland Board
Today—International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls—marks the start of this year’s 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence.
It is more than three decades since this global organising strategy began but this campaign calling to end violence against women and girls remains all too pressing and relevant.
Gendered violence remains all too common in many parts of the world, as is brutally apparent from the current violence and murder of women and girls in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Australia is certainly not immune from gendered violence with rising rates of domestic and family violence.
The Queensland Police Service reported 139,000 domestic and family violence occurrences in 2021-22 – an increase of nearly 48% over the last six years.
Too many Australian women are losing their lives to this violence. This year at least 53 women have been killed in violent incidents, according to the Counting Dead Women researchers of Destroy the Joint. On average one Australian woman a week is allegedly murdered, often by her current or former partner.
Australian Bureau of Statistics figures for 2021-22 show that 1 in 3 women identified as having experienced physical violence since the age of 15, and 1 in 5 women had experienced sexual assault.
This means that each of us probably know women who have experienced, or are currently experiencing, violence in their lives, whether or not we are aware of the violence.
Domestic and family violence is committed across race, culture, geography, and socio-economic groups – no group is immune. But gendered violence disproportionately affects our most vulnerable - First Nations women, those living with disability, women from the LGBTIQA+ community, and women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.
There may be reasons why the rates of reported gendered violence are increasing, but unlawful violence perpetrated by men against women is intolerable, whether in this country or elsewhere in the world.
The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and its associated 16 days of activism is an appropriate time for each of us to ask: “Are we doing everything we can?” - as individuals, as bystanders, as friends, as family members, as practitioners, and as organisations?
I had the great privilege to chair the Queensland Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce, set up in 2021 to examine coercive control, to review the need for a domestic violence offence, and to hear women’s experiences of the criminal justice system. I heard heart-breaking accounts of gendered violence from courageous victim-survivors and from the families of those who did not survive.
Pleasingly the Queensland Government has approved and implemented many of the Taskforce recommendations in its two ‘Hear Her Voice’ reports, including legislative change to criminalise coercive control and to improve the experience of victim-survivors in the criminal justice system.
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The Coercive Control and Affirmative Consent Bill was recently introduced to Queensland Parliament for discussion and debate. It is the Taskforce’s hope that criminalising this form of domestic violence, after a period of wide public education and recommended safeguards to avoid unexpected consequences, will lead to far more respectful personal relationships and much less domestic and family violence. At the national level, the Australian Government has recently released a set of National Principles to Address Coercive Control in Family and Domestic Violence.
At the personal level, each of us can act to help prevent gendered violence and to assist victim-survivors:
Practitioners should ensure they follow best practice principles and guidelines for working with people at risk of, or who have experienced, this violence. Legal Aid Queensland and Queensland Law Society have an excellent Best Practice Framework to guide practitioners in their work with vulnerable clients.
Most importantly, if you or someone you know is at risk of immediate harm, call 000.
For help to develop an escape plan, call 1800RESPECT – 1800 737 732.
For help to avoid becoming, or to stop being, a perpetrator of gendered violence, call 1800 RESPECT – 1800 737 732.
And Legal Aid Queensland can also help those affected by domestic and family violence to find a legal pathway to safety. Phone 1300 65 11 88.
*Photo from Supreme Court Library of Queensland website: The Honourable Margaret McMurdo AC | Supreme Court Library Queensland (sclqld.org.au)