The Central Coast has produced many great champions and many great achievements over the past decade, but one statistic we take no pride in is being No. 1 in NSW for rates of domestic violence.
On Friday, November 29, over 500 people marched through The Entrance and down to Memorial Park in recognition of International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Children.
The event marked Day 5 of the United Nation led ‘16 days of action’ in honour of the Mirabal sisters, three political activists from the Dominican Republic who were brutally murdered on this day in 1960 for their stance on violence against women. Participants were treated to a ceremonial dance led by leaders from The Glen who invited students from Wadalba and Gorokan High Schools to join them as well as spoken word poet Will Small.
But their high spirits could not mask the darker truth of why everyone was there. They were there because the Central coast has one of the highest police callout rates for domestic violence in NSW, a fact reinforced by Acting Crime Commander for Tuggerah Lakes, Reynold Urquhart. “In the first 11 months of 2019, there were 822 reported domestic violence assaults here in Tuggerah Lakes, that’s two and half reported domestic violence assaults a day. ”
The statistics for Australia, more broadly, are no less disturbing. According to White Ribbon Australia, already this year 52 women have been murdered in Australia by their partner or expartner, more than one woman per week. One in four women have experienced emotional abuse by a current or former partner since the age of 15 and one in five have experienced physical or sexual violence. Of those women that experience violence by their partner, more than half have children in their care.
Police in Australia are called out to a domestic violence incident every two minutes. Perhaps even more disturbing is that the age of perpetrators of sexual violence appears to be falling, a trend many attribute to unsupervised access by children to pornography and other inappropriate material online.
The economic impact of domestic violence through lost productivity and income as well as the costs to taxpayers are also staggering. A study by Price Waterhouse in 2015 estimated that the combined health, administration and social welfare costs of violence against women are around $21.7Billion a year and rising. The United Nations describes violence against women and girls as one of the most widespread, persistent and devastating human rights violations in our world today, one which remains largely unreported due to the impunity, silence and stigma surrounding it.
In the past decade, national attention here in Australia has intensified, with the Federal Government referring to domestic violence as a “national scourge”. In 2010, the Gillard Administration launched a 12- year National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children in partnership with state and territory governments. After almost 10 years and over $700 million in funding, there is little evidence that the Plan has had any real impact.
It seems the money has been spent on improving policy and public service delivery, data collection and national awareness campaigns but, according to the national auditor, it is not on track to achieve what it was meant to – reduce domestic violence. One of the event organisers, Danielle Habib, has worked in the domestic violence and community development sector for a number of years, including work with refugees and asylum seekers.
She is also a member of the Central Coast Against Domestic Violence Committee and the Central Coast Council Status of Women Committee. Habib believes the solution lies in educating younger people on what healthy relationships look like. “A third of the children and youth marching here today are growing up in violent households, so they are learning a model for relationships where they are either a victim of violence or a perpetrator. ”
It may be that policy-makers need to rethink their approach and provide funding to local community groups that are closer to the problem and can give effect to solutions more directly. In any case, what is clear is that it is the Coast’s men that need to take more responsibility for making our Coast a safer place for women and children to live.
Ross Barry, Publisher