Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm Ruby Jones, and you're listening to 7am.
Chapter 2: What alarming statistics about violence against women are presented?
29 women have been killed in Australia so far this year, most allegedly by their intimate partner. Their names sometimes hit the headlines, but often not. And even then, the outrage seldom lasts. We've known for a long time that Australia has a problem with violence against women. Little seems to work to change the statistics.
For some advocates, a royal commission is the only chance at making a difference. A petition calling for that now sits at more than 110,000 signatures. Today, writer and advocate Jess Hill on whether it will ever happen and what it could achieve if it did. It's Thursday, June 4th. So Jess, a royal commission into femicide. To begin with, tell me what you think that could achieve.
What is the most hopeful scenario if something like this were to happen?
So royal commissions are called when you have sustained institutional failure to respond to a really serious social crisis. And that petition is really highlighting things around police and the courts particularly. Obviously, that would just be the tip of the iceberg. It would summon decision makers and officials to give evidence. It would galvanise public attention.
it would create a momentum that can be hard to sustain in this area.
Often the only time we have kind of a bubble of media interest in domestic and family violence is when there's either like a trial happening with a sort of big media personality or there's a cluster of homicides or there's just some sort of strange angle that's come out of nowhere, like a petition for a royal commission, and particularly if the Prime Minister makes a good response to it.
I know that there is a call for a Royal Commission into the deaths of women. There's 90,000 signatures so far. What does your government feel about that? Will we see this Royal Commission? There's calls for a Royal Commission about everything. Well, I think deaths of women are pretty paramount, wouldn't you say?
Yeah, there are, but you've got to work out what does a Royal Commission do besides fund lawyers?
What we need here... And I think that response for a lot of people led to anger and probably more drive to advocate for a Royal Commission. So... a commission.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of the petition for a Royal Commission?
It would aim to force some sort of institutional response to violence against women. Tell me which institutions you think are failing women the most at the moment.
So if we look at particularly this call for a royal commission, which is specifically into femicide, the institution that comes to the top of the list is police. They are totally inconsistent in terms of their response.
There is a toxic masculinist culture across the police force where you see some exceptions in some local area commands and amongst some police, but that is the overarching culture. You have really persistent levels of racism and low levels of understanding of the crime that they are spending the vast majority of their time policing.
Police spend on average about 40% to 60% of their time in some areas that percentage is much higher. We have a domestic violence call out every minute in Australia. That's gone up from every two minutes 10 years ago. So one example that really comes to mind out of the research that I'm currently doing on the family law system, which of course crosses over with police and child protection, is
is a woman who went into a police station and she spoke to several officers at the same police station. The first three officers that she spoke to basically just looked at her blankly. The fourth officer, when she told him what had happened, and he was a junior officer, he went white in the face, got her to give a statement and they ended up pressing several charges.
If you had across the health system, surgeons that like may or may not really know how to do the operation that you're being wheeled into the operating room to have, and you're not quite sure whether you might bleed out on the table or whether you'll come out and you'll be all better. Just a bit of a potluck when you go into that operating room. How would society run? So police are a big one.
The family law system, despite a lot of efforts to improve it over the last few years, is still horrendously failing victim survivors and their children. We have children being ordered into the custody and care of parents who they've openly disclosed have harmed them. And, I mean, you could talk for an hour about the number of systems that are failing.
One I would like to point out that perhaps people don't think about so much is the health system because there are professionals to whom victim survivors and perpetrators are most likely to disclose, doctors and counsellors and psychologists and
And there is no obligation for anyone across the health system to have any understanding of domestic, family and sexual violence, despite the incredible prevalence of it. And despite the fact that they are often in the position of being a first responder to that. If we were to activate that health system, I think that we would see massive changes. We've already had
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Chapter 4: What potential outcomes could a Royal Commission achieve?
So we often direct our anger and frustration towards the federal government, not underservedly. They do hold the purse strings in a number of areas and they do set the tone and set the direction to a certain extent in terms of the response. But if we're going to change...
Policing, say, for example, if we wanted to bring in, I don't know, like actually independent civilian-led accountability mechanisms and oversight, there is nothing the Prime Minister can do to influence that. This is firmly in the jurisdiction of state and territories. And I guess the problem that we have is that there are very few premiers who who have the guts to take on police.
Most states and territories tend to have a very cosy relationship between the premiers, the police ministers and police commissioners, and it's a protection racket. This is like the really hard edge of power that we're coming up against when we're trying to get to the nub of why these murders continue and why women and children continue being terrorised by men seemingly with impunity.
But then we also have the other issue, which is just getting various ministers from different portfolios to see domestic family and sexual violence as a core priority for them.
We would need to see, for example, the Attorney General's Department in every state and territory see this as their core business, which it should be because it literally is the number one law and order issue in the country. So this should be a priority. It should be definitely a priority for Attorney Generals. It should be a priority for the Health Minister.
It should be a priority for the education minister. You know, these are portfolios who see domestic family and sexual violence as something extra that they do on the side. They don't see it as core business. If we could change that, then I think we might make some progress.
Still to come, do royal commissions still have the same power that they used to?
Suomalainen kirjakauppa.
Jess, we've been talking about the ways various institutions are failing women and the ongoing violence that's perpetrated against them and how change in those institutions would need to come from leadership in states and territories. A royal commission, though, that would have to be called by the federal government, which does not want to do that.
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