” The Australian Government recently ( September 2016) announced a $100 million package of measures to provide a safety net for women and children at high risk of experiencing violence.  The package will improve frontline support and services, leverage innovative technologies to keep women safe, and provide education resources to help change community attitudes to violence and abuse.

One in six Australian women has experienced violence from a current or former partner, and 63 women have been killed so far this year.

For Indigenous women the situation is even worse – they are 34 times more likely to be hospitalised as a result of family violence.

The package includes $21 million for specific measures to help Indigenous women and communities.”

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull 24 September Press Release :

Full White Ribbon Day speech below

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White Ribbon Day Website

Women and children in Australia have the right to feel safe and live without fear of violence.

In recent weeks, we have seen yet again the devastating impact that domestic and family violence has on our community. The tragic and avoidable deaths of women and their children at the hands of current or former partners or family members highlight the need for urgent action.

We must elevate this issue to our national consciousness, and make it clear that domestic, family or sexual violence is unacceptable in any circumstances.

Today the Australian Government is announcing a $100 million package of measures to provide a safety net for women and children at high risk of experiencing violence.  The package will improve frontline support and services, leverage innovative technologies to keep women safe, and provide education resources to help change community attitudes to violence and abuse.

The package includes $21 million for specific measures to help Indigenous women and communities.

COAG has made domestic violence a national priority, and governments are acting. But recent events show we are not moving fast enough.

This package responds to the initial advice of COAG’s Advisory Panel on Reducing Violence against Women and their Children – chaired by Ken Lay and deputy-chaired by Rosie Batty and Heather Nancarrow – which was provided to COAG at its special meeting on 23 July 2015.

This is part of the Government’s longer term response to domestic and family violence and the COAG Advisory Panel’s final report, due in early 2016, will advise on what further measures could be introduced.

Today’s package is in addition to the Australian Government’s $100 million investment in the Second Action Plan of the National Plan, and the $30 million national campaign to reduce violence against women and their children, jointly funded with the states and territories.

We look forward to working with states and territories to trial innovative new technologies to keep women safe, to train more frontline staff to recognise and respond appropriately to women experiencing violence, and to provide better resources and infrastructure to police working in remote Indigenous communities.

We will work with businesses and community groups to keep women safe from being tracked and harassed through mobile phones, and provide integrated services through dedicated domestic violence units in domestic and family violence hotspots.

We look forward to working with all Australians to say that enough is enough; that women and children must be safe in their homes and on our streets; and that domestic and family violence is never acceptable.

Immediate practical actions to keep women safe include:

• $12 million to trial with states the use of innovative technology to keep women safe (such as GPS trackers for perpetrators), with funding to be matched by states and territories.
• $5 million for safer technology, including working with telecommunications companies to distribute safe phones to women, and with the eSafety Commissioner to develop a resource package about online safety for women, including for women from CALD communities.
• $17 million to keep women safe in their homes by expanding successful initiatives like the Safer in the Home programme to install CCTV cameras and other safety equipment, and a grant to the Salvation Army to work with security experts to conduct risk assessments on victim’s homes, help change their locks and scan for bugs.
• $5 million to expand 1800RESPECT, the national telephone and online counselling and information service, to ensure more women can get support.
• $2 million increased funding for MensLine for tools and resources to support perpetrators not to reoffend.

• Up to $15 million to enable police in Qld to better respond to domestic violence in remote communities and for measures that reduce reoffending by Indigenous perpetrators.
• $3.6 million for the Cross Border Domestic Violence Intelligence Desk to share information on victims and perpetrators who move around the cross border region of WA, SA and the NT.

Immediate measures to improve support and services for women will include increased training for frontline staff and trials of integrated service models:

• $14 million to expand the DV-alert training programme to police, social workers, emergency department staff and community workers to better support women, and work with the College of General Practitioners to develop and deliver specialised training to GPs across the country.
• $15 million to establish specialised domestic violence units to provide access to coordinated legal, social work and cultural liaison services for women in a single location, and allow legal services to work with local hospitals, including for women from CALD communities and women living in regional/remote areas.
• $5 million for local women’s case workers, to coordinate support for women, including housing, safety and budgeting services.
• $1.4 million to extend the Community Engagement Police Officers in remote Indigenous communities in the Northern territory.
• Up to $1.1 million to help remote Indigenous communities prevent and better respond to the incidence of domestic violence through targeted support.

$5 million will also be provided as a longer-term measure to change the attitudes of young people to violence, through expanding the Safer Schools website to include resources for teachers, parents and students on respectful relationships.

This will build on the $30 million national campaign (jointly funded by the Commonwealth, states and territories) to change young people’s attitudes to violence, which will commence in early 2016.

PRIME MINISTER Speech :

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Well thank you very much Nicholas and thank you Michael very much for your inspiring words.

This is of course – this is a project that unites all the parties. And in a place where there is plenty of disagreement, it is wonderful to see the Labor Party, the Opposition, The Greens, the Coalition, Pauline Hanson, all sitting there together united in this one cause. Many other colleagues here as well. So I want to acknowledge everybody here.

This is an issue that is not above politics, it is not beyond politics, it is something in which all of the participants from the political process are united and that is even more important.

So I want to thank you all for being here. I want to thank the Chief of the Defence Force and all of his defence leaders

here today for the great leadership they’re showing.

I also want to thank the founders of White Ribbon. I want to thank its CEO, Libby Davies, Nicholas Cowdery. I want to thank Telstra too for sponsoring this event.

Most importantly, I want to acknowledge the victims of domestic violence and their families, whose courage and suffering we honour today. Yours are the faces and the stories behind the statistics that we are determined to change.

Today, I recommit to my role as a White Ribbon Ambassador.

And I encourage all men to wear a white ribbon as a sign of respect for women. As a sign that you do not tolerate violence or disrespect of women, and as a vow to stand up and speak out wherever you see it.

On White Ribbon Day, we stand together ‐ men and women ‐ and we condemn the actins of the few who commit domestic violence.

And we call on all men to respect women and show that they abhor violence against women, to stand with us and say so.

We want to enlist men in this campaign because we know how powerful it is when men say to their brothers, their fathers, their sons, their mates

Yes, it is true that some men are victims of domestic violence.

But the overwhelming majority of victims of family violence are women and children. And the overwhelming majority of the perpetrators are men.

We know for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, they are 34 times more likely to experience domestic violence.

That’ why all of us here today and many more men across the country are leading by example and calling out

That’ why all of us here today and many more men across the country are leading by example and calling out domestic violence for what it is ‐ a crime.

Nicholas nailed it in his opening remarks –this is not a private matter, it is a crime. The term domestic violence which I suspect is too established to be dispensed with, is one that has the risk of minimizing what is a crime of violence.

And it has to be seen and rejected and stopped as a crime.

Now as Prime Minister, I have led a national conversation about the importance of respect for women.

Disrespecting women does not always result in violence against women. But all violence against women begins with disrespecting women.

This is a key insight and one we must never forget.

This is about respect.

Now we can all make a difference. We can be better role models. That is critical, especially for us here as leaders.

Whether we are leaders in business –I see Tony Warren from Telstra. Whether we are leaders of the Defence Forces or the Public Service or parliamentarians.

All of us are leaders and we have to be role models.

But above all as parents, we have to raise our sons from the earliest age to respect women ‐ beginning with their mothers and their sisters ‐ the women closest to them, the first women they meet, they learn to live with.

They must be taught to respect them, and we must encourage and teach our daughters to have greater self‐esteem.

Last month, I hosted the COAG National Summit on Reducing Violence against Women and their Children, with the Queensland Premier –it was the first of its kind.

The Summit brought together First Ministers, Women’ Safety Ministers and more than 150 experts and leaders to reaffirm our commitment as a nation to stopping violence against women and children.

There, along with my State and Territory colleagues, we launched a Third Action Plan, which had extensive community input, engagement and buy‐in.

On this White Ribbon Day, may you be sustained by this solidarity and by the knowledge that we will not rest unti you are safe.

Thank you very much.

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