New National Plan Aims To End Family, Domestic And Sexual Violence “In One Generation”

A problem of epidemic proportions in Australia, the Federal Government on Monday launched one of its key national policies – a 10-year National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children.

The new plan will take a whole-of-society approach, bringing together governments, businesses, workplaces, educational institutions, services, communities and individuals, to achieve the shared vision of ending gender-based violence in one generation.

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"Violence against women and children including sexual violence is just not acceptable and so our commitment is to say that we don’t want our children and our children’s children to be dealing with the same issues," the minister for social services, Amanda Rishworth told ABC.

“So, while I’m not going to give a specific number of years, it is a clear commitment that we need it to end to draw a line in the sand and really have a very clear goal on what we’re working towards.

“But I think the key message here is we don’t want our children and our children’s children to be still dealing with this in the future,” she said.

The National Plan sets out actions across four domains:

1. Prevention– working to change the underlying social drivers of violence by addressing the attitudes and systems that drive violence against women and children to stop it before it starts.
2. Early intervention– identifying and supporting individuals who are at high risk of experiencing or perpetrating violence and prevent it from reoccurring.
3. Response– providing services and supports to address existing violence and support victim-survivors experiencing violence, such as crisis support and police intervention, and a trauma-informed justice system that will hold people who use violence to account.
4. Recovery and healing– helping to reduce the risk of re-traumatisation, and supporting victim-survivors to be safe and healthy to be able to recover from trauma and the physical, mental, emotional, and economic impacts of violence.

Currently, one in three women has experienced physical violence since the age of 15; while one in five has experienced sexual violence; and tragically on average, one woman is killed by an intimate partner every 10 days.

While, rates of violence are even higher for certain groups, such as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women.

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