“How do we maintain the rage?” Sussan Ley asked in parliament last week.
The opposition leader was speaking to a motion introduced by Labor’s Sharon Claydon to end family and domestic violence. Claydon read the list of the 74 Australian women who were murdered in the last year.
“Every year I read this list in the hope it will be the last,” she said. “Heartbreakingly, that day has not yet come.”
The rage remains. What’s missing is a proportionate response.
Day after day we read the stories of women, and often children, killed by men.
We light Parliament House up in orange, an initiative that I began with the speaker Milton Dick when I was an MP, now repeated annually by the government.
We have a plan to end violence against women and children within a generation.
Yet we continue to underfund it, on both prevention and response.
As I’ve written before, gender-based violence, a sanitised term for the bashing, coercion, intimidation and murder of women, barely rated a mention in this year’s federal election campaign.
In 2024 the prime minister, under pressure after a series of horrific deaths over the previous year, had named it a “national crisis” – which it is.
But what’s changed?
I have seen few words and even less action from the government on this since the election, and I don’t see any substantive policy or budget promises from the female-led Coalition either.
Women’s legal services still can’t meet demand.
Crisis housing services still can’t meet demand.
Did you know that in Melbourne hundreds of women and children are placed in cheap motels every night by services that have nowhere else to send them? And there they remain, especially vulnerable to the same violent offenders.
Every two minutes police are called to a domestic or family violence matter. Yet policing responses often fail, as Guardian Australia’s two-year-long Broken trust investigation has starkly reported.
Red flags are too often missed. Data is inadequate and not synced up across states and justice systems.
The real fix requires billions but even the $96.5m spent failing to fix the Bureau of Meteorology website, for example, would be welcomed by overstretched services.
What better time to get a reality check than the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence.
Enter the “toxic trio” so described by the journalist and advocate Jess Hill – sport, alcohol and gambling.
It’s an inconvenient truth but, for the sake of our mothers, our sisters and our daughters, it’s time to better connect the dots.
We know that violence against women spikes around big sporting events.
We know that alcohol use spikes and with it domestic and family violence.
We know that Australians are the biggest per-capita gambling losers in the world.
We know that the fastest-growing group of problem gamblers in Australia is young men aged 18 to 24.
And we know that the government is resisting banning ubiquitous gambling ads due to pressure from big gambling, big sport and big broadcasting.
Studies show that family violence is three times more likely to happen in families where there is problem gambling.
Research from Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety shows that loss of income from gambling can intensify the frequency and severity of men’s intimate-partner violence against women.
What is happening behind closed doors in your street, your suburb, while the game is on, the grog is flowing and the bets are failing?
It’s not a big leap.
The independent MP Helen Haines made the connection in the parliament with a question to the prime minister on Wednesday.
Albanese acknowledged the link. “There is no question, as well, that the cause of violence can never be excused but, in many cases, that is one of the issues – along with alcohol abuse, along with so many issues that cause violence,” he said.
The federal government’s own review into approaches to end gender-based violence recommended a phased ban on gambling advertising.
The review also recommended other measures, such as restricting alcohol sales and advertising, and examining the density of poker machines in relation to the prevalence of family and domestic violence.
So far, crickets.
The evidence is there; the action is not.
It’s heartening to see some in Labor speaking up on gambling advertising. The backbencher Dr Mike Freelander is right, in my view, when he says that a free or conscience vote across the chamber would yield a gambling ad ban.
I know of members left, right and centre who would vote for it if unencumbered and able to vote based on the views of their communities.
There are many arguments for it – protecting our children, reducing billions of dollars in public health costs, alleviating mental health issues and family breakdown, among others.
This week, during the 16 days when we supposedly face into so-called gender-based violence, let’s also consider safety.
It’s life and death. What could be more important than that?
