MINISTERIAL STATEMENTS

Ms PLIBERSEK (Sydney—Minister for Social Services) (12:02): by leave—I present a copy of the Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commission's yearly report to the parliament and a copy of my ministerial statement. I want to begin by acknowledging victims and survivors of family, domestic and sexual violence and remembering the women and children killed—too often, by men who claimed to love them.

I also want to thank Commissioner Cronin and her team, who join us in the gallery today, and all the lived-experience advocates who are also with us today. A mother of three recently wrote to me about the world her and all our children are growing up in. She has a daughter she wants to keep safe.

She's got two sons that she's trying to raise to be decent men, like their father. She worries that increasingly, 'neither is entirely within her control.' She wrote about the forces shaping adolescence—how the pornography that once lived in the back room of video stores now sits in children's pockets, and how her son, who's just in primary school, was exposed to it in the playground; how her daughter was filmed by a group of boys in public without her consent, and the worry she now carries about what that footage could be turned into.

She described being a parent today as 'feeling like you're standing at the edge of a field watching something unfold you can no longer stop.' Her letter ended with a plea— That governments, at all levels, keep regulating the online spaces and technologies that parents can't. And that we ensure that 'Whatever gets funded in the next national plan reaches boys early, and that it reaches the ordinary ones—not only the ones already in trouble.' That letter came to my office on the last day of August—a devastating month for our nation.

Reports of women being attacked in broad daylight and killed in their homes cycled through our headlines. As did serious allegations of sexual assault—including cases in which both the victims and perpetrators were children. I've thought a lot about that letter since.

Not because I believe every schoolyard prank is a precursor to violence—it isn't. Or that we should fear every teenager wielding a smartphone—we shouldn't. But because of the questions underneath it.

Namely, what kind of culture are our children inheriting? And what are we teaching them when family, domestic and sexual violence remains so pervasive in this country? When we talk about the challenges of ending this violence—hope can feel like an impossible word.

Especially when we consider how technology and social media are creating new avenues for abuse and amplifying the misogyny that often underpins it. But in the opening pages of this year's report, Commissioner Cronin reminds us that hope is a muscle. And that if we want to become a country where women and children can live free from violence—we need to exercise that muscle.

I think the other ingredient is belief. We must believe that this violence is preventable to have any chance of stopping it. Just as we must refuse to coexist with it, normalise it, or accept it as inevitable.

Crucially, we also have to understand it as a collective problem. One that requires collective action. Today, I want to echo the commissioner's vision about what an Australia free from violence could look like.

And I want to lay out how the next phase of our national plan can get us there, if governments at all levels lead, and institutions and everyday people play their vital roles too. To borrow the commissioner's words—the nation we should all be working towards is one where family, domestic and sexual violence is rare, brief, and non-recurring. Rare because we prevent violence.

Brief because when someone is in danger, we recognise it early and offer to help immediately. And non-recurring because victims-survivors get the support they need to leave and safely heal, while perpetrators of violence are held accountable for their actions, so they can't keep harming people. We're already taking concrete steps to make that vision a reality.

We're reforming our family courts, child support, tax, superannuation and social security—so that the systems women and children rely on can't be weaponised against them. We've made the leaving violence payment permanent, so they don't have to choose between survival and safety. We've invested in crisis accommodation and housing to ensure that there's always somewhere to go.

And we've boosted funding for the frontline workers who save lives, while targeting the repeat offenders who inflict so much harm. It's work that, through the leadership of this Prime Minister, has been elevated to the National Cabinet, which agreed on a new national risk assessment framework at its last meeting to ensure that our responses to violence remain consistently high across borders.

So that whenever someone at risk seeks help—whether it's at the GP, or from a police officer, a nurse, or a social worker—those early warning signs are acted on. But while we should be proud of every bit of progress being made, we can't mistake progress for success. The dozens of women and children killed this year; rising rates of sexual violence among young people; and the online harm that's rapidly spilling into the real world are painful reminders of the long road ahead.

The next phase of the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children is the best compass we have. For the last few months, the fantastic assistant minister Ged Kearney and I have travelled across the country to hear directly from frontline workers, from victims-survivors and from advocates—to understand where we need to go from here, because one of the clearest messages in the commissioner's report is that lived experience isn't just testimony.

It's expertise. The people who have had to navigate these systems see exactly where the gaps are, because they've fallen through them, which is why their knowledge is shaping our next steps—many of which align closely with the recommendations in the commissioner's report. First and foremost, we know that we have to shift from simply responding to violence, to dealing with the conditions that cause and exacerbate it.

That means getting support to families before they reach crisis, while continuing to fund the frontline services that people depend on today. It means ensuring children experiencing violence get the help they need to escape and heal; intervening earlier with people who use violence, before their behaviour becomes entrenched; holding perpetrators to account; and giving the sexual violence that is playing out in our schools, institutions, homes and communities the distinct and sustained attention it demands.

To do all this work we need to ensure the services people rely on prioritise safety, reflect the realities of their lives and speak to each other across jurisdictions, just as we need the state and territory governments who run them to be reliable partners. That means strengthening the frontline supports victims-survivors rely on—not cutting them, as some jurisdictions have—while ensuring every point of contact counts.

That is the principle behind the new National Risk Assessment Framework. And it's why we're laser focused on co-designing policies with the people they're intended to serve. 'Our Ways—Strong Ways—Our Voices'is just one example of where we'll show what this can look like in practice. It's the first standalone national plan for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children.

But it's also an important opportunity to work with First Nations communities to find solutions that meet their unique needs and address the barriers they face when seeking help. The reality, however, is that our responses simply won't be effective if they can't keep pace with the new frontiers of violence that we face. Technology has created innovative ways to control, humiliate and abuse.

And we now live in a world where teachers across the country are reporting little boys as young as six using language that they've picked up from the so-called manosphere. Parents and educators can't be expected to take on billion-dollar tech companies alone. That's why dealing with online harm remains a central focus of our government.

We never claimed the social media delay for under-16s would be perfect—but we knew it would be a lifeline for parents fighting the David versus Goliath battle of infinite scroll. Age assurance for pornography, to ban access for under-18s, follows a similar principle. We can't pretend for a second we can put the genie back in the bottle when it comes to the avalanche of violent pornography that exists online.

But by restricting access and investing in age-appropriate 21st century sex education and porn literacy, we're giving young people the best possible chance to learn about consent and love from people that they trust. Holding platforms accountable for the harm their products inflict is the next challenge that we need to meet. That is why it's crucial our digital duty of care, which we released yesterday, embeds safety by design and forces social media companies to consider the welfare of their users.

Ending violence requires us to do two things at once. We have to be there when somebody needs help today, while building a future where violence touches far fewer lives. Since coming to government, we have invested well over $4.4 billion to pursue those goals and more work lies ahead.

But if we want violence to become rare, brief, and non-recurring, as the commissioner states, we must ensure that all areas of government at all levels—social security, education, health, police and justice—are speaking to each other and pulling in the same direction. And, crucially, we must confront the attitudes and behaviours across our communities that still minimise or excuse violence, or allow it to remain hidden in plain sight.

I know that we have it in us as a nation to rise to the task ahead because I've seen parts of our culture, which once felt unmovable, change before. I grew up in an Australia where family, domestic and sexual violence was often viewed as a private issue, not a crime, and where politicians—many in this very House—argued that the first funding for women's refuges would destroy the family, as if it was the escape from violence breaking up homes, not the violence itself.

Today, by contrast, governments at all levels accept that keeping women and children safe is a public responsibility. We fund and visit the refuges that were once vilified, states and territories have introduced important changes like affirmative consent laws and laws against coercive control and the victims-survivors who suffered in silence are helping design policies to keep others safe.

None of that happened by accident—it happened because of relentless pressure from ordinary people: from women who spoke up when they were told to be quiet; from advocates who wouldn't take no for an answer; from communities who took to the streets; from governments who listened, created new laws and invested in services; and from Australians across the country, ordinary people, who changed what they were prepared to accept.

That is how culture shifts. Yes, governments at all levels must lead, because there are responsibilities that only governments can carry. But we can't do this work alone.

There are things unfolding in homes, schools, workplaces and sporting clubs that we simply don't see, just as there are men who kill women who've never previously come into contact with our justice systems until the worst has happened—until it's too late So, to Australians who are listening across the country today, my message is very clear: you have more power than you think.

Take a disclosure seriously. Show your children that love never requires control. Model respect at every opportunity.

Teach the boys in your life the value of empathy, and that women's and girls' boundaries aren't obstacles to overcome. These feel like small acts but, taken together, they can make a radical difference. We have changed this country before.

Now is the time to move together to change it again. We owe the women and children who have had their lives stolen by this violence more than our horror. We owe them action.