Domestic violence event organisers ‘profiting from the issue'

WHILE domestic violence support services struggle to keep their doors open, another sector is profiting from the issue, critics claim.

DOMESTIC violence experts have accused an “opportunistic” private events provider of profiteering from the issue by charging up to $2400 a head to attend a one-day domestic violence conference in Brisbane.

The Domestic Violence Summit 2016, hosted by Sydney-based events provider International Quality and Productivity Centre, will cost charity representatives from $1100, and other attendees up to $2400, per ticket – from which just 10 per cent will be donated to a domestic violence service.

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Speakers at the event, to be held at Royal on the Park in Brisbane’s CBD in April, include Police Commissioner Ian Stewart, White Ribbon CEO Libby Davies, and government representatives from the Premier’s Department, Victoria Health and the NSW Department of Justice.

Leaders in the domestic violence services sector told The Courier-Mail they had been “besieged” with requests from for-profit conference organisers during the past year, and accused them of commercialising the issue.

They say strapped charities would blow their yearly training budget to attend the one-day event, which cost over three times more than government-funded or community-run conferences.

“What the for-profit conference organisers are realising is that the issue of family and domestic violence is high on the political and social agenda, and so we have been besieged by for-profit conference organisers to speak at events,” Ms Davies said.

“A lot of people I know are pulling out from those sorts of conferences because they are just profiteering really on the issues that the not-for-profit sector has been dealing with for a very long period of time.”

University of Wollongong sociologist and academic on domestic violence Michael Flood withdrew from speaking at the summit after realising its cost.

He sent an open letter last month condemning organisers for seeing a “commercial opportunity in the growing public and policy attention to domestic and family violence”.

“The for-profit companies organising highly priced conferences make significant profits from a sector, which is poorly resourced,” Dr Flood said.

“They are oriented towards profit.

“In a sense, that is fine ... the concern is what are the level of those profits and to what ­extent does organising a conference in that way undermine the actual agendas of the ­conference.”

International Quality and Productivity Centre declined to comment.