runner,

"....Like Rudd he appears to need some ' moral ' issue to cover his treachery for the last 12 months. He can hardly use gw as Rudd used that one when it was convenient. Malcolm is showing how much he about spin."

Or maybe he's reacting to the fact that 63 women have been killed in domestic violence incidents so far this year.

(Although I think the term "un-Australian" is a vacuous nothing word that's employed as some sort of lame meaningless token when Australians display their worst traits.)

' Or maybe he's reacting to the fact that 63 women have been killed in domestic violence incidents so far this year.'

Yeah Poirot and that is tragic. I have known personally some who have killed women after being let out of prison with a long line of offences. Again I doubt whether the pc brigade would allow a breakdown of the offenders profiles to be revealed. When proper targeting is done I will then believe they are really getting serious. The dramatic increase of murder in South Africa over the last couple of decades goes largely unreported. Largely due to the profile of those committing the crimes.

The distressing part of all that I've heard so far regarding the initiative is the continuation of the completely gendered version of the discussion.

No mention of the admittedly smaller numbers of men who lose their lives at the hands of intimate partners ( 2002–03 to 2011–12 166 males compared to 488 females http://aic.gov.au/publications/current%20series/rip/21-40/rip38.html thats 25% of intimate partner homicides. If I'm reading the numbers correctly 15 of those 166 male deaths were by a male partner.

No mention in what I've heard about the impacts of disrespecting men on men by their partners and where that leads to.

No mention that during that period refereed to in the previous reference 2186 men were the victims of homicide compared to 1205 females.

It's a vile issue but I strongly believe that those who insist on framing it entirely in gender terms are part of the problem in reducing DV. They leave men with violent partners few options by way of support, they leave those men worried that any attempts to seek help will see them labelled as the problem. They leave violent women with the knowledge that no one takes their use of violence seriously and knowing that any attempt by their partner to defend themselves leaves their partner at risk of legal consequences.

We have been over the stats on lower levels of violence over many years, that seems to be a dead end with nobody listening.

Does anybody though believe that 25% of intimate partner homicide fatalities don't rate any kind of mention (let alone the suicides resulting from intimate partner abuse in it's various forms)?

R0bert

rechtub, I can't locate recent stats giving the kind of breakdown you mentioned. A report from 1998 is the best I've found so far (there may be more recent around). http://www.aic.gov.au/media_library/publications/tandi_pdf/tandi090.pdf

A couple of demographic issues stand out from the material I've seen. Being an aboriginal woman (wonder what impact remote community vs urban has on that) puts someone at around 20* the risk in the general community. Not working seems to be a very big factor for both perpetrators and victims.

Probably depends on how not working is defined but my understanding that most measures would have the figure at less than 10% of the adult population but in the 1998 report the percentages are over the 50% mark for perpetrators and victims of intimate partner homicide.

Under the influence of alcohol at the time is over 30% for both categories as well. A fair representation of previous criminal record as well.

There are a lot of factors involved, most of which I think the pollies either don't want to know about of consider to be political suicide to raise. Be so much better if we could have a concerted approach to stopping all non consensual violence rather than politicised campaigns that all to often either do little or make the situation worse.

R0bert

Well if you ignore the DV statistics pertaining to immigrants and Aborigines the picture doesn't look too bad, figures quoted by the Age earlier this year suggest that 84% of DV complainants in Victoria are overseas born.

The following link may be of interest:

http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1415/ViolenceAust

It covers domestic, family, and sexual violence in Australia
and gives an overview of the issues.

We're told that in Australia domestic, family, and sexual
violence is found across all cultures, ages, and socio-
economic groups. But, the majority of those who experience
these forms of violence are women.

However, it is not possible to measure the true extent of the
problem as most incidents of domestic, family, and sexual
violence go unreported.

The information available as the link states on the
prevalence of domestic, family, and sexual violence in
Australia is derived from surveys.

The 2013 Australia wide survey on personal safety conducted by
the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) found that
many men and women experience at least one encounter with
violence in their life-times.

The survey showed that men are far more likely to experience
physical violence at the hands of a stranger but women
experience physical violence by someone known to them -
usually an intimate partner or family member.
Both men and women are more likely to experience physical
violence than sexual violence - but women are more likely
to experience sexual violence in their lifetime than men.

The social and economic costs of violence against women are
considerable. In 2009 the National Council to Reduce Violence
against Women and their children (NCRVWC) estimated the
violence against women and their children including both
domestic and non-domestic violence cost the Australian
economy $13.6 billion.