Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to start by congratulating the member for Bradfield in his work on this important issue. I, too, rise to speak on the issue of men's violence against women in our community.

Since the last time I spoke on the issue in this place, hundreds of women have experienced physical or sexual assault from partners or former partners. Most heartbreakingly, we have also seen more deaths from family violence, potentially including the alleged murder of a woman in Taree this week by a partner in breach of an AVO.

We have also heard a consistent message from advocates and service providers, including the 'No More Deaths' coalition, that we need a holistic, coordinated response from the government to this issue. We need to see our legal services, housing services, health services, child protection services, police, justice and our courts being given the resourcing and the coordination support to ensure that every part of our government is working together to ensure women in our community are safe.

Importantly, we also need to encourage men to take responsibility for their actions and to help those men, who are willing to do so, to take the journey towards lasting behavioural change. That is why I was pleased to attend a recent meeting of the Men Taking on Responsibility group run by Relationships Australia Victoria, in Sunshine in my electorate. This is a group for men wanting to take responsibility for their actions towards women and change the way they behave in relationships. The men I spoke with were there voluntarily, out of a desire to be better partners and fathers. Since 2006, the group has met each Thursday and some men have been attending for many years to try to help others to start and stay in the course, and to go through the same change in attitudes and behaviours that they had through the course.

The meetings are a place where men can share their experiences in addressing their abusive behaviour and work to ensure that this behaviour does not happen again. The group is coordinated by Kurtz Snelleksz, who provide the men with updates in behaviour change research and training, and who ensures that the conversations they have there have a therapeutic effect. It is important to recognise that these sessions are not talkfests. They are very confronting for the men involved. Men are forced, sometimes for the first time, to reflect on their actions from the perspective of the women and children in their lives and to workshop ways of changing their behaviour in the future. I felt the emotional intensity of this process in my visit firsthand.

Men from the program have been vocal about the changes that the program has helped them to make in their lives. Some men, like Martin Micallef, told The Age that the men's support group:

…probably saved my life from being a disaster.

Unfortunately, funding uncertainty has put the future of this group and others like it in doubt. The loss of groups like this and the enormous value that they can have to the women and children of the men who benefit from them would be significant. As one of the men in the group asked me when discussing the value of this group to our community, 'What price a family?'

I applaud Kurtz Snelleksz and the Relationships Australia Victoria group for their work in spearheading this program. I also want to honour the men participating in this group. The biggest battle in fighting family violence is changing men's attitudes and behaviours. This group is an important front in this battle and I admire the men who are there both for taking responsibility for their own actions and for working to help other men in our community do so too.