Page 782 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 18 March 2015
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traumatic impact it has across our community. It is, I think, a matter of some regret, though, that all too often our focus and our attention on these issues is only drawn when there is a tragedy like the death of Tara Costigan, because this is an issue that is occurring every day in our community.
Every day there is violence and intimidation in a household somewhere in Canberra. More likely than not, Madam Speaker, it is violence perpetuated by men against women and children. That is not exclusively the case. There are instances where men are also the victim of domestic violence. But, overwhelmingly—and the statistics tell us this—it is violence perpetuated by men against women and children.
That being said, it is nevertheless welcome that as a community and as an Assembly we are engaged in this discussion today. Yesterday we had a very comprehensive discussion about the efforts the ACT government is undertaking to address this issue. Those approaches have included a very strong level of whole-of-government commitment to the national strategy for the prevention of violence against women and children which, of course, was instigated, developed and signed off by the previous Labor government. Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard was a leading advocate of the importance of that national strategy.
Locally we have our own strategy and policy framework to respond to the issue of preventing violence against women and children in our community. We continue to work collaboratively both nationally in the national fora, as needed, to drive implementation of the national strategy and locally with our community sector and justice sector partners to ensure that these reforms continue to be implemented.
The ACT government, through its officials, has since late 2014 been consulting on the second implementation plan of the national strategy. This involves engagement with the community sector, the Domestic Violence Prevention Council, the Victims of Crimes Commissioner, relevant government directorates and ACT Policing. So we will continue as a jurisdiction to be a very strong voice in national fora, including the anticipated April COAG discussion on domestic violence.
Here in Canberra our work is focused on concrete actions to combat this terrible scourge. We have strong domestic violence laws and we strongly support the development and implementation of a framework so that domestic violence orders can be recognised across state boundaries. As Attorney-General I had a discussion with my state and territory counterparts late last month where we collectively agreed that we would support every effort to provide for a nationally recognised register of domestic violence orders regardless of state boundaries.
We know that all too often women and children flee a violent situation, often moving interstate. Yet having taken out an order in one jurisdiction, it may not be recognised or known in another. A national register is one way of overcoming that problem and I am very pleased to see that across all jurisdictions there is bipartisan support for such a reform.
I would like to turn to some of the statistics. Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety, ANROWS as it is known, released a report in May
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