Page 667 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 23 March 1993
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DOMESTIC VIOLENCE - COMMUNITY LAW REFORM COMMITTEE
Paper
Debate resumed from 10 December 1992, on motion by Mr Connolly:
That the Assembly takes note of the paper.
MS SZUTY (8.00): Madam Speaker, I believe that it is unusual to speak to discussion papers currently under consideration by the Community Law Reform Committee. However, I feel that now is an appropriate time to discuss how the domestic violence laws are performing and whether our approach to domestic violence is the right approach at the right time. Unfortunately, there are still many people in the community who feel that a certain amount of domestic violence in society is acceptable, while at the same time they will not accept any form or level of violence from strangers.
This Orwellian doublespeak view of violence in society has a lot to do with perceptions of relationships that come to us from the Victorian era. Most people hold the view that it is acceptable for them to destroy their own property but not the property of others, and as our laws that concern people were grafted onto a system that was originally conceived to protect property it is not surprising in some ways that personal relationships and societal violence became enmeshed in that web of property rights. I hope that we are now coming to the view in the late twentieth century that people are not property.
Unfortunately, in our society judgments are made every day about our own individual worth within the community and our ability to contribute to that community. Most people will be understanding, for instance, of the plight of the unemployed person who loses confidence when unable to find work even though that inability is not their own fault but partly the product of an economic downturn. How much more confidence sapping must it be to be the victim of a violent relative or partner who appears to get away with acts of violence that would not be tolerated from a stranger?
What was sought by domestic violence legislation in the 1980s was to give people who were subject to violence at the hands of those closest to them ways of escaping that violence and of society saying to perpetrators that it is not acceptable to treat other people violently or as possessions. Human beings need to be treated humanely. The message to date has appeared to have been slow in getting through because the attitudes of the people in the community were not taken into account by legislators when domestic violence laws were introduced. The Community Law Reform Committee itself quotes the Office of the Status of Women phone poll of 1988 which showed that almost one person in five believed that violence against a wife was acceptable in some circumstances.
It is not just perpetrators who express this sentiment; it is potential perpetrators, jurors, potential or actual victims and the children of victims and perpetrators. Eighty-two per cent of respondents in the poll also believed that withholding money was considered justifiable and 58 per cent felt that verbal abuse was acceptable. With this level of acceptance of denial of other people's human rights,
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