‘It is getting worse’: Anne Summers says rise in domestic violence ‘horrific’

Australians are being promised new federal measures to protect women from domestic violence after a series of horrific attacks, with leading feminist Anne Summers warning about the growing problem as she joins an expert panel to advise on solutions.

Summers pointed to the increasing use of technology to spy on women as one sign of the increase in abuse, while also pointing to new research that suggests some young men are more willing than older men to tolerate violence against women.

Anne Summers says domestic violence is getting worse.Credit: Danielle Smith

The government will name the new panel members on Tuesday with a promise to develop new measures later this year to add to $3.4 billion in federal funding to try to protect women.

“It is getting worse, but it’s changing,” Summers said after the government confirmed her appointment to the panel.

“When you say domestic violence, we’re covering a lot of things: we’re covering physical violence, sexual violence, emotional abuse, financial abuse, technology-enabled abuse, and they all have different manifestations and different impacts on victims.

“I think there are two things going on. One is there is less shame about talking about it now, so that people who have been victimised are more willing to talk about it, although not so willing to go to the police.

“But it is getting worse, as well. I think the increase, particularly in technology-enabled abuse, is really quite horrific.”

This masthead reported in March and April on the spread of “stalkerware” being installed by men to track their former partners, including the use of Apple AirTags and internet-connected refrigerators.

Another of the new panel members, author and educator Jess Hill, has named accountability for perpetrators and the systems that enable them as key to prevention.

“We need to prevent violent people from continuing to be violent,” she said in an email to this masthead. “How do we best do that? Recovery from coercive control and family violence is prevention – it helps break the multi-generational transmission of violence.”

Hill added that crisis response refuges were also a form of prevention because they were often one of the first places victim parents and their children had a safe place.

“They can be a place that kickstarts the beginning of recovery – and would have much better results if we could actually stop perpetrators exploiting systems to torment, dominate and exploit their victims post-separation,” she said.

“But what we need to see is this: women’s refuges aren’t just warehousing women and kids who should just be allowed to stay home.

“Refuges are actively preventing homicide, and they are preventing suicides, and the decisions by state and federal governments for the past few decades to systematically underfund the refuge system and provide short-term grants drastically undermines the sector’s ability to do their acute homicide and suicide prevention work.”

While the government unveiled $925 million in the May 14 federal budget to expand payments to women who need urgent financial help to escape violence, it has been criticised for not doing more to fund basic services for women.

The announcement on Tuesday will clear the way for more research on the problem next month, so the expert panel members can advise the government on future measures.

The panel will be co-convened by the Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence commissioner, Micaela Cronin, the executive director of the Commonwealth Office for Women, Padma Raman, and the secretary of the Department of Social Services, Ray Griggs.

The panel members to be named on Tuesday are Summers and Hill, University of Melbourne research fellow Zac Seidler, diversity and inclusion consultant Todd Fernando, RMIT Centre for Innovative Justice associate director Elena Campbell and Victoria Police assistant commissioner Leigh Gassner.

A research project at Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) will be completed next month to guide the panel on the best place to spend federal money to prevent violence against women.

“This rapid review will bring together experts and provide practical advice to government to help us end the scourge of domestic violence,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement.

Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth described violence against women and children as a “national shame”, and Minister for Women Katy Gallagher said the panel’s advice would lead to more effective and targeted ways to prevent violence, including to stop women being killed.

Summers, a top adviser to former Labor prime ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, is professor of domestic and family violence at the University of Technology, Sydney, and has been a prominent voice in calling for greater action on the problem.

While Summers said some men had changed behaviour in a generational shift, she noted that research from ANROWS suggested some young men tolerated violence against women.

The agency’s findings last December found that young respondents to a survey were still significantly less likely than those aged 25 years or older to “strongly disagree” with some attitudes that minimise violence.

ANROWS also found that most young Australians recognised that consent must be active and ongoing, but it said fewer young respondents “strongly disagreed” that a man was justified in forcing sex when the woman had initiated kissing and then pushed the man away.

National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732)

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