RObert (and others)

That stuff on the Queensland Dept Health site is outrageous.

Stephen Robertson is the new Minister, give his electoral office a phone call to complain or drop a short note (or email) quoting the stuff in the site.

Here are his addresses and it would be interesting to see an outcome:

Stephen Robertson MP

Electorate Office
Unit 5/62 Pinelands Road
SUNNYBANK HILLS Q 4109

Ph: (07) 3344 2659
Fax: (07) 3344 1258
Email: stretton@parliament.qld.gov.au

For those you are unsure, the polite form of address is The Hon. Stephen Robertson MP ( and continue with the address).

I mentioned writing to him at his electorate office or at parliament house because there is no point in writing to him as Minister for the Department of Health (the bureaucrats will just toss off a diplomatic, do-nothing reply).

I would be polite, it's not his fault and he probably has not seen the site.

Re: QLD Health - skewed stats
These stats 85-95% are taken from 'reports to police'. Men generally dont report domestic violence - when my ex-wife threatened to shoot me (in front of the children, I might add). The domestic violence service said, 'we only handle complaints of violence against women'. (Apparently men did not exist as part of the domestic environment) When I rang the police they actually laughed down the phone and said, 'Alright we'll make sure she doesnt get a gun licence'. That is in part why men dont report.

I have written to almost every government agency I can find suggesting they use the new figures available from the ABS Personal Safety Survey that has been recently released.

Unfortunately there seems to be a concerted campaign of misinformation in government circles to promote the ideas that 'victims' and 'women' are the same thing and 'perpetrators' and 'men' are the same thing. I am appalled when government bureaucrats appearing on programs like Insight use these terms interchangeably.

It is a waste of time writing to the people who drafted it.

The best approach is the handwritten letter to your local member. Much more emphasis is put on handwritten than typed than fax than email (in that order).

However a handwritten letter to the Minister at his electorate office would do.

You do not have to argue a case or provide scads of evidence, all you need do is:

- Express doubt about the numbers and request clarification of the source of the numbers and what limitations apply to the numbers and any conclusions that can be drawn from them. After all, a definition of 'domestic violence' is not given, nor is the source of the numbers given. Where and when were the numbers collated? For what purpose/s?

- At the same time ask why there is an apparent difference or inconsistency between the numbers given and violence numbers for Australia which seem to indicate that, with respect to children, women feature strongly in psychological violence and non-delivery of care/nurtrition to children. Are these numbers included? If not why not?

Again, there is no reference to same sex couples, yet researchers believe that violence in same sex couples is not uncommon. Why were same sex couples excluded and what action will be taken to redress this omission?

I was surprised that 'domestic violence' was interpreted by one (federal) agency as refering exclusively to interaction between adult male and female (heterosexual) couple.

At he same time the definition was broad enough to include a verbal remark about the woman's clothing as 'domestic violence'! The site did not say how the daya was collected! It OUGHT to have been given though along with any inherent limitations in the data and its interpretation. Hey we are taliking about government funded bodies here and they should not be adopting a political stance.

I think a lot of men get bogged down justifying and defending themselves (which is exhausting) when a far better result is obtained by just asking a few questions of the right person.

I have been lucky enough to be brought up to respect women, defend the "weaker sex", they are not really , and not kick a man while he is down [after a fist fight that is ].
Women's roles are changing .
This does not bother me ,but their lack of comittment to their male partners does.This is very detrimental to cohesion and happiness in our society .
It would be very interesting to find out how much psycological "violence" men do cop from their partner and their female bosses .
Girls, should the mental bruising be taken "on the jaw" ,like a man ??

"Kids are now left home alone because mum just has to go and make her 'mark' on the world...dads dont know which way is up because they were once the bread winners and were taught that from birth".

OZGIRL, ever thought that some women go out to work because their husbands dont/cant make enough money. Getting more common now that women are more educated and getting equally (or better in lots of cases). It does tend to hurt the male ego a tad, but they're reasonably hardy creatures.

Some kids also get left at home alone, because they're in a single parent family (lots of them around these days) - someone has to put a roof over their heads.

For me, I grew up in a single-parent family, caused by death, not divorce. My dad did a pretty good job raising 3 girls, teaching them about puberty, getting them through a public education system where most maths and science teachers were still male (despite this I still managed to beat the boys at maths and physics - yay!). All this when he only got 2 years of schooling by correspondence school (never been in a classroom in his life). We got left alone at home (or at the bus stop on the way home from school) plenty, because someone had to work. Didnt hurt us - we're all reasonably balanced people. Reasonably.

Yes men are discriminated against. So are women. Unless it turns downright nasty, who cares. Walk away, turn off your tv. If it gets nasty, put the boot in for your rights. Hard. Where it hurts. Otherwise, get over it.

I am no longer young and I was just thinking - I have never actually seen a woman slap a man. It makes me realise that women have known how to punch for a very long time.