Greens leader in the Senate and spokesperson on women, Larissa Waters
“Thousands of people joined marches around the country yesterday calling for an end to gendered violence, and for the declaration of a national emergency in the face of an escalating death toll of women.
“Labor’s response has been lacklustre in the face of this public outcry. The total funding commitment to the National Plan over five years is $2.23 billion, less than half the $5 billion the women’s safety sector is calling for.
“Women’s Legal Services have said they are turning away 52,000 people a year because they don’t have the funding they need to keep up with demand.
“There is no national record of the number of women killed by violence in this country. Instead we rely on volunteer work of organisations like Counting Dead Women and Australian Femicide Watch. This data should be kept by the government, as we do for the road toll, to encourage reduction of the numbers of deaths.
“Stopping violence against women will take systemic action to tackle root causes and transform harmful social norms, but it also requires adequate funding of the organisations that do the hard work on the frontlines of this epidemic.
“Prevention must be prioritised to stop women being killed by men’s violence and to dismantle our persistent rape culture. While consent and respectful relationships education is now mandatory in our national curriculum, more funding is needed to properly resource public schools and specialist third-party providers to deliver and implement this education.
“An alarming number of people still disbelieve or victim-blame survivors of assault. We desperately need to overhaul the criminal justice system so that trauma-informed training guides police and judges.”
Greens portfolio holder for First Nations, Senator Dorinda Cox
“The Missing and Murdered First Nations Women and Children Inquiry and hearings, has sadly shone a light on the historic and current failures for First Nations communities when trying to keep women and children safe from violence.
“First Nations women and children are disproportionately impacted but as we saw from the rallies this weekend, this is a national emergency that impacts us all.
“I refuse to ask women to carry the burden of keeping themselves and their children safe. This makes us complicit and as a community we all have a responsibility to say enough is enough.
“It is now time for all Australians to stop being silent and use their everyday power to stop violence against women and children.
“Let’s stop asking women why they dont leave or what were you wearing? And start calling it for what it is, men’s violence that is not acceptable. It should never be condoned and should include appropriate consequences including adequate bail conditions, in order to protect women and children.
“I acknowledge that many men rallied yesterday and we need to encourage more men to stand up and challenge other men. Help raise our boys with good role models and stop protecting men who use violence against women with lame excuses.
“Now is the time for Labor to adequately fund early intervention, crisis response and healing/recovery services.
“For those who use violence, we need to provide accessible and appropriate well funded behaviour change services and opportunities to see their is a better way.
“Labor also needs to fund and ensure culturally safe and place based services and responses that consider Australia’s diversity of cultures, language groups and terrains and the needs of regional and remote communities.
“In order to do this, they need to immediately review the process for allocation of the block funding as we know that this process is flawed.
“Labor needs to implement the capturing of national data as we can’t provide adequate funding response if we are not capturing and sharing data that will inform appropriate funding allocation and honour the lives of those killed.”