Page 709 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 17 March 2015
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Over 12 years the national plan aims to achieve a significant, sustained reduction in violence against women and their children. To make this change, commonwealth, state and territory governments have agreed to work together to achieve six national outcomes, and these are: communities that are free and safe from violence; relationships that are respectful; strong Indigenous communities; services that meet the needs of women and their children experiencing violence; justice responses that are effective; and perpetrators stopping their violence and being held to account.
The national plan focuses on the two types of violent crimes that have a major impact on women in Australia: domestic and family violence and sexual assault. The plan recognises that it is not a problem with individual acts of violence from individual men. It is a cultural problem that stems from the way our society values women and their contribution from the time that we are girls. The national plan focuses on stopping violence before it happens in the first place, supporting women who have experienced violence, stopping men from committing violence and building an evidence base so that we learn more about what works in reducing domestic and family violence and sexual assault.
These changes take time, which is why we will have a series of four action plans over 12 years. Each of the four action plans builds on the others over the 12 years and is designed so that we can build on what has been achieved in each three-year plan and focus on what actions will make the most difference in the future. We are now working on the second implementation plan. Over the first period, the ACT government and governments across the nation worked to understand the complexity of this issue. We saw roundtables, community forums, the beginnings of inquiries and an explosion in the available resources and current research. It is time to evaluate this issue, and I wholeheartedly support Prime Minister Abbott’s decision to do this.
The ACT women’s plan 2010-15 is the ACT government’s strategic framework to improve the status and lives of women and girls. The Ministerial Advisory Council on Women has been having conversations around the future of this plan since July last year, and part of this plan will be about ensuring that there is a gender lens cast across all of the work that governments do and the work that needs to continue to be done. I am going to be working hard with my commonwealth, state and territory colleagues to progress the second action plan for the national plan to reduce violence against women and their children.
We have many domestic violence services but we also need a plan on how to end this violence and deal with its consequences. The ACT prevention of violence against women and children strategy lays the foundation for how we, both as a government and as a community, view and respond to violence against women and children.
The second implementation plan for the ACT is currently under development and will include an increased focus on addressing domestic violence in the other initiatives of government, such as the human services blueprint and the better services initiative. This emphasises the right services, at the right time, for the right duration. And as we implement the national disability insurance strategy we will make sure that our support and investment address the safety of women and children with a disability.
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