The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that around one in three Australian women experience physical violence, and almost one in five experience sexual violence, over their lifetime.
1 The unique nature of violence against women demands a specific and urgent national response.
National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and Children
Delivering on its election commitment, the Government is implementing a National Plan and is setting up a National Council. The immediate actions to be delivered through the Plan include:
- Developing respectful relationship resources for Australian high school students to educate young Australians, particularly boys, about the impact of domestic violence and sexual assault;
- $1 million over four years to support White Ribbon Day education activities in rural and regional communities to promote culture-change that will reduce violence against women;
- toughening and harmonising state and territory domestic violence and sexual assault laws;
- $200,000 for new research into international best practice models for working with perpetrators of violence; and
- $500,000 million to boost the Australian Institute of Criminology's National Homicide Monitoring Program to inform future interventions to protect women and children from violence.
National framework for protecting Australia's children
As part of our commitment to tackle child abuse and neglect, the Australian Government is developing a National Child Protection Framework. The Australian Government has committed $2.6 million to work with all levels of government, child protection workers and the community sector to establish a national framework to protect children.
Cyber-safety - policing for Internet safety
The Australian Government has committed $125.8 million to a comprehensive range of cyber-safety measures, including law enforcement, filtering and awareness. The Government's cyber-safety funding will provide $49 million to law enforcement, ensuring that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) Child Protection Operations Team can expand its capacity to detect and investigate online child abuse, with 91 additional AFP members dedicated to online child protection by 2011.