//For what it’s worth, because I am one of the multimillions of Australians who have never bashed anyone or had the slightest impulse to do so or any sympathy for anyone who does//

Well, aren't you a saint. I have the impulse to bash people all the time. Especially people who get in to quiet carriages on trains and immediately strike up a conversation. Those rude bastards piss me off more than just about anyone, and when people piss me off it triggers violent impulses. Which I don't act on, because I have impulse control and the higher reasoning bits of my brain kick in to remind me that bashing random strangers is slightly more unreasonable than talking in the quiet carriage.

We all have our own particular triggers, but some of us have worse impulse control than others. Especially when intoxicated, when people are more likely to act impulsively.

As for your argument in favour of mandatory sentences for certain violent crimes: I think a lot of people would agree with you and I have certain sympathy for the argument myself, but mandatory sentencing policies have a notoriously poor record of delivering injustice. I have more faith in the judiciary to hand down just sentences for violent offences than I do in mandatory sentencing policies.

"ortunately Mr Turnbull has no problem knowing what it is"

If the PM has a definition of DV that coincides with EmperorJulian's focus on bashers then he is well out of step with what Australian governments have been saying for a long time.

http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/2011-2012/DVAustralia#_Toc309798373

Domestic violence includes:

emotional abuse—blaming the victim for all problems in the relationship, undermining the victim’s self-esteem and self-worth through comparisons with others, withdrawing interest and engagement and emotional blackmail
verbal abuse—swearing and humiliation in private and public, focusing on intelligence, sexuality, body image or the victim’s capacity as a parent or spouse
social abuse—systematic isolation from family and friends, instigating and controlling relocations to a place where the victim has no social circle or employment opportunities and preventing the victim from going out to meet people
economic abuse—controlling all money, forbidding access to bank accounts, providing an inadequate ‘allowance’, preventing the victim seeking or holding employment and taking wages earned by the victim
psychological abuse—making threats regarding custody of children, asserting the justice system will not believe or support the victim, destroying property, abusing pets and driving dangerously
spiritual abuse—denial and/or misuse of religious beliefs or practices to force victims into subordinate roles and misusing religious or spiritual traditions to justify physical violence or other abuse
physical abuse—direct assaults on the body, use of weapons (including objects), assault of children, locking the victim out of the house, sleep and food deprivation, and
sexual abuse—any form of pressured/unwanted sex or sexual degradation, causing pain during sex, coercive sex without protection against pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease, making the victim perform sexual acts unwillingly and criticising or using degrading insults.[8]

Just a tad wider than bashing. I suspect that's more what the PM was talking about than just bashers.

And worth mentioning from the same page "The traditional associations of domestic violence are with acts of physical violence within relationships occurring in the home but this understanding fails to grasp the complexity of the phenomenon. "

R0bert

Looking at the publication date, the wording, the restriction to one gender for victims, and the vague catch-all psychobabble in the parliamentary report R0bert cited, I think I’ve a fair idea of who put it together and what their agenda was.

It’s full of just what behaviours people who want to explain away real violence might point to, scraping up every real or imagined female (for example)marital malfeasance, labelling them all “violence” and bewailing all the “violence” heaped on us men (for example)by women (for example) so no wonder some of us eventually end up “losing it”. I’m surprised R0bert fell for a product of female gender warriors.

If reformers want the state to make inroads against domestic violence they’ll have to take on board how the law of the real world defines and acts against violence, e.g. how and when violence restraining orders are constructed and what they mean (e.g. see Legal Aid site at http://www.legalaid.wa.gov.au/InformationAboutTheLaw/DomesticandOtherViolence/ViolenceRestrainingOrders/Pages/ViolenceRestrainingOrders-Information.aspx ).

For definitions of acts of actual, physical, violence look up definitions of common assault, threats of assault, actual assault, actual bodily harm (ABH), battery, GBH, manslaughter, murder. That’s what real violence is. American sites give a oretty good idea http://injury.findlaw.com/torts-and-personal-injuries/assault-basics.html.

EmperorJulian, "Looking at the publication date, the wording, the restriction to one gender for victims, and the vague catch-all psychobabble in the parliamentary report R0bert cited, I think I’ve a fair idea of who put it together and what their agenda was."

The hassle is that all main political parties and government departments toe the line on that approach and agenda. The same types of issues were part of the Coalitions Violence Against Women - Australia Says No campaign.

Nothing in what I've seen or heard of Turnbull's announcement (or anything else from him on the issue) suggests that he is taking a different approach to the issue.

I don't understand why you think Turnbull is changing the approach, the restriction to one gender, the vague catch-all definitions have been a part of the approach to DV by both the Libs and Labor for a long time. The approach suits both paternalist's and feminists.

Turnbull's comments were very much framed in the gender paradigm and nothing in it suggested a change of approach to the broad definitions although the phrasing was about violence (but that combo has been well used in the past, talk violence but use very broad definitions).

R0ber

"Turnbull's comments were very much framed in the gender paradigm and nothing in it suggested a change of approach to the broad definitions although the phrasing was about violence (but that combo has been well used in the past, talk violence but use very broad definitions). "

Precisely, that's why I think that although Turnbull has triggered a useful converesation about combatting domestic violence his remedies in themselves will make no real difference. He has been swept aside by the gender warriors.

The reason why Turnbull will fail is that he doesn't confront actual violence per se, which occurs because violent scumbags, domestic and otherwise, are allowed to be at large.

There is little sympathy out in the real world for violent criminals, but a lot of sympathy for them among elite legislators, magistrates, judges, DPPs, sociologists, parole do-gooders - and bashers.

The basic legal structure is in place already, what can make headway is an effort to harness populism in direct confrontation with the do-gooders and gender warriors over the faux "rights" of bashers to be free to commit crimes of physical assault in its indictable forms.

Thousands of maimings and deaths could stack up over centuries while waiting for gender advantages and disadvantages to be argued over with no broadly accepted solutions.

EmperorJulian:

Did it ever occur to you that your violent ‘scumbags’ are human beings who may have been the victims all their life of other such ‘scumbags’. Your utterly simplistic understanding of human behaviour and your complete lack of compassion are quite disturbing. Many people who are in jail for violent behaviour may be there as a result of one incident for which they are now paying dearly. There are people however such as yourself who are aggressive on a daily basis with a constant need to hurt others.

You can make your singular point which you have done on many occasions in this thread without resorting to the language you use. If you have a good argument then you should be secure in that argument and confident that your solution will be the one adopted. If it does not get adopted then you should be at peace with yourself in that you have done everything possible to change society. Why then do you feel the need to use the language that you do? What do you hope to achieve by it if not to heap more pain on these perpetrators than the state has decided?

Perhaps the real scumbag is a lot closer to you than you would like to admit but it is less confronting if you maintain a more generalised rage that does not open personal wounds. Your dismissive attitude to ‘psychobabble’ on more than one occasion is quite telling of you.

Even more telling is the notion that you have to expose your own personal experience for your views to be taken seriously. No one has to do that. Arguments live or die on their logic not on personal anecdotes. It seems though that you want to tell us as if it is a cry for help in trying to understand a problem which seems all too personal for you.