MATTERS OF PUBLIC IMPORTANCE

Ms SPENDER (Wentworth) (15:57): Every eight days in this country, a woman is killed by a current or former partner. Our communities are not just grieving; they are despairing. I acknowledge every victim-survivor—those we have lost and those living with violence today.

This parliament owes them action, not announcements and not reannouncements. It owes them outcomes. We've spent weeks in this House talking about the crisis.

Our communities are absorbing horrific reports of sexual violence among children and by high-profile sportsmen. But here is the uncomfortable truth: Australia has no shortage of reports or good intentions. What we lack is delivery.

More than a thousand recommendations sit on the record from inquiry after inquiry and review after review. They are accepted, welcomed, noted. But acceptance isn't implementation.

There is no single, transparent mechanism telling Australians which recommendations have been delivered, which have stalled and, most importantly, what is actually working. So we fly blind. We pour money and goodwill in without the basic discipline of knowing what changes behaviour and what doesn't.

When this government does talk about action, it talks about the dollars spent. I respect those dollars spent; I think they're incredibly important. But they cannot tell us about whether these dollars have made the difference that we are all seeking here.

I know that it is very difficult to change culture and change people's personal lives. This is extremely difficult. But that is why the focus on evidence is even more important.

The evidence is hard to get, but we must seek it, and we must be very clear on the importance of it because we will not change something as fundamental as how our communities relate to each other until we do. Fourteen members of the crossbench wrote to the Prime Minister ahead of the National Cabinet asking the commission to have the tools it needs to do the job already tasked of it.

This is not a novel idea. It was a recommendation of the 2024 Unlocking the prevention potential report, repeated in the commissioner's 2025 report and again in the report tabled today. That's three reports in two years, with the same ask and no answer.

We handed a commissioner a national emergency without the authority to find out what is really happening and without the authority to ensure that we know how money is being spent. In today's report, Commissioner Micaela Cronin says plainly that our ambition as it stands is unmeasurable. We must give the commissioner genuine statutory authority.

Let it compel data. Let it track delivery on a public dashboard. Good intentions do not protect women.

Measurement, transparency and accountability might go some way, but we also need to look at our public systems. Our systems are built for incidents not patterns. They can see a bruise.

They cannot see a decade of control. Too often, the system is not merely blind to the abuse; it is the instrument to it. Whether it's a child support claim, a tax debt or a court application, perpetrators have learned that these can land as hard as a fist.

I welcome the work that the government has done in this space. I welcome the audit of the Australian government's systems and the budget commitment to reform the child support and tax systems. This is good work, but it should go further.

I urge the government to include the family law system in this review and in this audit, because it is part of the weapons. Finally, if we are serious about prevention, we also need to reckon where misogynistic attitudes are being formed in the first place. Increasingly, that is online.

University of Melbourne research found that 19 per cent of 18- to 29-year-olds agreed that violence could be legitimate to resist feminism. A Dublin City University study using accounts built to mimic teenage boys found that every test account was served antifeminist content within 23 minutes. Around one in three adolescent boys now report strong misogynistic beliefs or a distrust of women.

This is not a fringe issue. This is a generation being steeped in hatred by machines that profit from their anger. I welcome the government's commitment to create an opt-out of the algorithm.

I urge the government to listen to the experts and to make this an opt-in to the algorithms. I commend Fix Our Feeds and the work that Chanel Contos and others have done to try and make this change, which I've been proud to back from the beginning. Australians of every age deserve the right to switch off the algorithms engineered to addict and outrage them.

The last piece isn't 'show me the money'; it's show us the outcomes. Victims-survivors are owed the evidence, and, every eight days, that bill comes due.