Melissa Davey – The Guardian – Australia’s first royal commission into family violence has made a comprehensive 227 recommendations in its landmark report to the Victorian parliament, making it the most extensive document ever handed down on how to how to prevent and respond to the issue.
Minutes after the report was published, the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, repeated his pledge to introduce all its recommendations, even though he acknowledged it would cost “many hundreds of millions of dollars” and some would take years to implement.
“The budget will be delivered in just a couple of weeks time,” he said. “Obviously here are some things that can’t wait. We will move quickly on those things that simply can not wait.
“That will come at a significant cost. This is not about saving money. This is about saving lives. Family violence is costing us at least $3.1bn dollars every single year. How do you put a price on a life lost?”
Rosie Batty, the campaigner against domestic violence and mother of Luke Batty, whose killing by his father was one of the attacks that prompted the royal commission, said she was “thrilled” by the report.
Within the recommendations there is an emphasis on breaking down a siloed system to increase transparency and cooperation between sectors, as well numerous recommendations to hold the performance of those sectors to account.
Removing the burden from victims in getting help and placing accountability on the shoulders of perpetrators is also a strong focus of the report.
There is also a role for the state government in lobbying the federal government for change, the report says.
Andrews established the family violence royal commission in February last year. The report was handed by the commission to the Victorian governor, Linda Dessau, on Tuesday, and released on Wednesday.
Several of the recommendations deal with creating a more comprehensive information-sharing regime between police, courts, family service providers and other parts of the family violence sector, including a recommendation the government establish a secure central information point led by Victoria police and which stores databases from the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice.
It would mean that when risk assessments are being made about the likelihood of a perpetrator reoffending, their history of involvement with a range of services are made available to those charging with assessing that risk.
Throughout the royal commission’s hearings, several experts described a system where the full history of a perpetrator’s involvement with courts and the justice system was not immediately accessible to police and magistrates, leading to weakened intervention orders and an underestimation of risk to victims and children.
Even a perpetrator’s involvement with different police commands was not always easily accessible to other police officers or magistrates, the commission heard.
There is also a focus on allowing victims of family violence to remain in their own homes so that they are not forced to uproot themselves and often children as they seek out safety in crisis accommodation or homeless shelters.
Instead the commission has recommended the government should give priority to allowing victims to safely stay in or return to their own homes by offering rental and mortgage subsidies and by monitoring perpetrators through the police and justice systems. This means the government also needs to expand the number and range of crisis and accommodation services, the report says, with priority given to rural and remote areas.
Victims should not be forced to spend more than six weeks in crisis accommodation, including motels and refuges, the commission recommends. To achieve this, a family violence housing implementation taskforce comprising senior representatives from the public and commercial housing sectors as well as family violence specialists should be established within a year, the report says.
A strong emphasis has been placed on accountability by the commission. The Victorian minister for housing, disability and ageing should report annually to the parliamentary committee on family violence on the extent of housing shortages for family violence victims, progress in meeting benchmarks including ensuring women are moved into permanent housing within six weeks, and proposals on how to meet demand and shortfalls.
The government and police should regularly audit their compliance with the code of practice for investigating family violence, the report says, and the results of these audits should be made public.
The recommendations aim to take the burden away from victims in having to navigate through the court, police and social service systems by calling on the Victorian government to introduce support and safety hubs in 17 regions of the state.
These hubs would be a kind of one-stop-shop for victims to safely receive police referrals, make contact with family violence services, establish a safety plan and risk assessment for further violence, and book victims into crisis accommodation and support services for children.
The court system should be overhauled within five years so that all family violence cases be heard within specialist family violence courts and the magistrates’ court should consider capping lists of family violence-related matters to take pressure off an overwhelmed system that struggles to properly consider each case.
Family violence victims, especially those caring for children, should be able to give remote evidence so that they don’t experience the trauma and at times, safety risk of facing their perpetrator in court, the report says. Where this is not possible safety rooms in courts should be established so victims do not have to face their perpetrators as they wait for their court matter to come up.
A review of interventions for perpetrators, including behaviour change programs, and the strength of those programs should be carried out by an expert committee, the commission recommends, while the attendance of men to counselling service and behaviour change programs should be monitored.
Men’s behaviour change programs need to be comprehensively reformed so that they are based on best practice and international evidence, the report recommends, with evidence given during the commission’s hearings that there was little evaluation carried out of the programs and it was difficult to establish if they worked.
There is a role for the Victorian government to encourage the commonwealth to consider a Medicare number for family violence counselling, the report says, and through its membership of the Australian Health Workforce Ministerial Council, encourage the council to improve family violence training standards for general practitioners.
The Victorian government should also lobby the Council of Australian Governments (Coag) to encourage the federal government to amend the national credit code to include family violence as a ground for financial hardship.
Numerous other recommendations have been made in the report focused on maintaining and improving the financial security of family violence victims, with perpetrators often disempowering their victims by controlling their finances. There are numerous recommendations made for specific groups of victims, including the elderly, men, LGBTI victims, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, and those from ethnically diverse communities. Within two years, the Victorian government should expand support programs for Indigenous victims and provide adequate funding for Aboriginal-controlled health organisations within one year.
In a statement issued shortly before his scheduled press conference, Andrews reiterated his commitment to implementing every one of the report’s recommendations.
“I refuse to look back in 10 years’ time and admit that we could have done more to save lives,” he said.
“We will punish the perpetrators, listen to the survivors and change the culture that allows family violence to happen in the first place. There can be no excuses. Our work begins today to overhaul our broken family violence system from the bottom up.”