Page 673 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 23 March 1993
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assumes to be available is quite ineffective. I think we have a complacency in our community that everything is all right, and in fact it is not; it is a major problem. It is a tragedy for the individual victims and it is a waste of the few resources that we have available to us. I suspect that there are many victims of this kind of crime who are unseen and unheard. That is another aspect of the statistical reporting that I mentioned before. These people continue to suffer while the rest of the community goes about its business with some comfortable notion of how good our society is. I think there is an educational problem that needs to be corrected.
I think that action is required quickly. I know that programs to assist victims, to educate the law enforcers and the community all cost money, and it is a priority problem that the Government has to face; but I am convinced that a problem of this magnitude should receive greater priority for a fair share of the existing resources. The report states, for example, that 30 per cent of police work is now domestic violence related. A problem of such a magnitude demands the commitment of resources as a priority. It clearly must be a matter of concern to the Attorney-General, who is under pressure with his police budget, that 30 per cent of those 700 policemen that we have on our books, on those statistics, are involved for almost all of their time on matters concerned with domestic violence. I think that is another statistic that is quite horrifying. I could not believe it when I read it.
I would suggest, Madam Speaker, that a Treasury examination would find that the additional costs of providing specialist police, for example, who are expert in this problem would probably only be equal to the hidden indirect costs related to treating the victims and the effects of domestic violence in a direct way. The impacts on the health, community services and court budgets must in themselves be quite significant. If you deal with the problem you ease the pressure. Apart from making a major change in the lives of these people, you can make a major change in the allocation of your resources.
Another aspect that comes out of the report is this question of domestic violence orders. In many cases they provide no protection at all. There may well be merit in the report's suggestion that domestic violence orders should have unlimited effect, subject only to judicial review. That perhaps would solve the problem of victims having maybe 12 months' protection and then falling back into the position where they were before, having to deal with their problems alone and without any assistance from anybody. I think the report is full of instances where the structure has failed dismally to offer adequate protection to the victims.
One of the points that Ms Szuty made - this level of acceptance in our community that violence is okay - is again something that worries me. There is clearly a need for attitudinal change in this matter, and the sooner we set about effecting that the better. I mentioned the problems of people of non-English-speaking background, of Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders, each of whom have their own particular difficulties within the general problem. I think that the disabled are at risk of being marginalised in this issue as well. They are recognised in the report as a special group, and their needs are special because they are in many ways more dependent on their domestic circumstances than a lot of other people. So there are some issues here that really must be addressed.
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