A Call To All Good Men – Stop Domestic Violence

Last year domestic violence was the leading cause of death and injury in women under 45 in this country. It reportedly accounted for 40 per cent of police time, and cost the economy $13.6 billion. The Easter period alone marked the death of six women and children in a single week. This year, which is not yet two months old, we have already seen 14 Australian women allegedly killed by domestic violence. If that figure runs true, we are online for the shocking statistic of two domestic violence related deaths per week in 2015. That represents a 100% increase in such crimes since last year. It underscores what campaigners have long warned, that domestic violence is at risk of reaching epidemic proportions in Australia. In 2014 Assistant Commissioner Mark Murdoch, the New South Wales police spokesman on domestic violence, sounded a call to action when he said “Men need to wake up to the fact that it is a men’s problem. It is perpetrated by men who use their power and control over women, and until they wake up to that fact, nothing’s going to change.”

Notwithstanding some feminist rhetoric which has sought to rewrite history, violence towards women has never been condoned by good, decent men. On the contrary, it has been always despised as the brutish and cowardly behaviour of boorish bullies. Today, more than ever, it is time for Australian men to stand up and restate those values, clearly and unequivocally.

Mr Chris Nyst recently published an article in the Courier Mail, in which he questions whether governments have got the strategy wrong in talking about this problem. The issues he raises are well worth considering.

View the online petition by Di Macleod the director of the Gold Coast Centre Against Sexual Violence Inc, calling for broad review of Governmental and social responses to the domestic violence issue. It’s an initiative I hope all good, right thinking Australians, male and female, will get behind.