Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner Micaela Cronin tabled the Commission’s progress report on the Commission’s progress report on the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032 on 21 August (The Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commission Yearly Report to Parliament, August 2024).

WEL applauds its recognition of the importance of embedding lived experience in policymaking including those from diverse populations. Its call for new data sources and measures is essential. It highlights the difficulties many services have with meeting demand, stressing that frontline services need more certainty through longer funding. It emphasises that men must be part of ending violence and that governments have a role in redefining masculinity and engaging men effectively. Workforce capability is seen as key to improving system responses including foundational training for a range of professions interacting with domestic violence services.

WEL will thoroughly analyse the report and how it relates to the just released Government’s Rapid Review of Prevention Approaches to end gender-based violence covered in our June newsletter.

National plans are important expressions of government commitments and objectives, but their implementation is paved with pitfalls, one of the deepest being a tendency to generalise solutions with responsibility shared by both governments and communities. This can result in a lack of focus on key drivers of violence. Experts are questioning the effectiveness of current approaches taken by primary prevention strategies. In particular, they are raising the issue of targeting all men and notions of masculinity without sufficient acknowledgement of socio-economic factors and excessive alcohol consumption as contributors to domestic and family violence.

WEL looks to the Government, which prides itself on evidence-based policy making and program design, to ensure that funds are targeted, not just to attitudinal change through community education, but also to legal and other measures that effectively reduce violence, including the acceptance that socio-economic factors and alcohol consumption may be central causes. WEL’s priority remains the adequate funding of all women’s refuges and domestic violence services as the front line for life saving support.