All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.
A national watchdog is needed to ensure state, territory and federal governments effectively implement policies and programs to stop violence against women and children, according to the Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence (DFSV) Commissioner.
In her latest assessment of whether governments are meeting their commitments to prevent and respond to violence against women and children, commissioner Micaela Cronin said the amount of progress being made is not commensurate with substantial government investment nor in line with years of inquiry recommendations.
“The risk is that activity is mistaken for progress,” the commissioner’s report said.
The DFSV commission found systems meant to keep governments accountable are so fragmented they are leading to authorities passing the buck on responsibility.
The numbers show a failure to meet a key performance measurement in the national plan: a 25 per cent reduction per year in female victims of intimate partner homicide.
Sexual assault statistics also rose to their highest rate in over 30 years.
The commission analysed more than 1,000 recommendations from more than 25 federal, state and territory inquiries, royal commissions and coronial inquests into violence against women and children since 2010.
It found that while recommendations were often “repeated in report after report” many had not been consistently or widely implemented.
Well, one can go back to way before that date! When at the Australian Institute of Criminology 1977-1981 I captured listed and analysed all motions from way before that date and up to it … finding repeat after repeat of the same old same old … After that date, non-molestation orders were supposed to be the answer. Totally wrong track, nonsense approach to the problem, undermining women’s rights to not suffer criminal assault at home and other forms of domestic violence, substituting ‘insult to the court’ (for breach) rather than recognising breach as a wrong inflicted on the woman herself … Of course, one could go on. Read Even in the Best of Homes – Violence in the Family, 1983 (Penguin/Pelican), 1990 (with update chapter) (McCulloch).