Returning to the Micaela Cronin’s point about language when speaking about domestic, family and sexual violence, what does she think is best practice?

It is a tricky one, isn’t it?

I was having a conversation with someone the other day about what we have learnt, in terms of the way we talk about suicide and what we have learnt about the importance of both having the conversation but being aware that it can be risky and dangerous for communities as well.

We have the same issue when we talk about domestic family and sexual violence. We know there are risks of backlash, there are risks of copy cat. We know where there have been some really graphic, traumatic instances occur, that actually it has caused ripple effects for other women, women who call up services saying “I have just had threatened to me, I am going to do the same thing to you”.

We need to be very mindful in the way we talk about, I think domestic family and sexual violence.

We need to be talking about it in a way that holds the people who use violence accountable but respectful of – and absolutely respectful of the women and not labelling them in terms of what’s happened to them and there are some very good guidelines that exist about that, that we need to be ensuring that media and anybody who has leadership around communicating about it is well educated in.

NDIS reform deal ‘a devastating blow’ to disability community, says Lidia Thorpe

Independent senator Lidia Thorpe is not a fan of the deal which has been done on the NDIS legislation:

It’s a devastating blow to the community that undermines decades of progress on the rights of people with disabilities and will result in lives lost.

The First Nations Disability Network has outlined serious concerns about this legislation. But again it appears Labor are ignoring First Peoples, preferring to listen to the Coalition instead.

None of these decisions should be made by people who do not have disabilities.

Micaela Cronin says she wants ‘all leaders to step up and do better’:

I want this to be election issue, I want this to be something that parties are recognising the need to be put in their best foot forward and committing to what we will see in future terms and I think we are seeing that, I think that as I said before, the national plan is a good foundation but will need to be thinking about how do we build on that going forward.

The domestic, family and sexual violence commissioner Micaela Cronin says she is aware work is under way by the government to audit government payment systems to examine how they can contribute to harm in this space.

I’m aware that that work is under way and we will be keeping an eye on that.

Micaela Cronin says there is not one area that she thinks there needs to be material change, because the response needs a holistic response.

Cronin says community legal centres do an “extraordinary job” and there needs to be a “much better understanding of the demand”.

I do think that responses for men is critical and we need that not to be at the expense of response services, who are taking calls every day. I think the community legal services do an extraordinary job on the ground of wrapping whatever needs to be done around their services and they’re often not funded to do that, so I think taking a comprehensive view of what are the points in the service system that we need to be really looking at that uplift and across the country, is something that all governments need to be urgently paying attention to.

‘Systems are weaponised to harm people,’ says DV commissioner

Micaela Cronin said addressing family, domestic and sexual violence, governments need to start thinking about systems:

One of the things I want to call out in terms of thinking about our systems is that we know that systems are weaponised. Systems are weaponised to harm people.

And all of our systems can be weaponised.

We know child support security payments are weaponised.

We know the family court is weaponised.

The child protection system is weaponised against women and children.

Cronin said the business sector had looked at changes in its sphere and the need to speed change up.

Government needs to do the same.

‘We have seen an 11% increase in sexual violence in the last year’: Micaela Cronin

Micaela Cronin says:

The last financial year, 43 women were murdered in intimate partner violence, but the numbers are much larger than that if you start to include people, women, children and children who die as a result of family domestic and sexual violence.

We have seen an 11% increase in sexual violence in the last year.

First Nations women are 33 times more likely to be hospitalised, six times more likely to die.

And 60% of LGBTQIA+ people will have experience [of] family domestic and intimate partner violence.

That’s what many people will be facing today and always and it’s not something that many people want to look in the face all the time.

It is something that advocates are courageously and bravely bringing to our attention so that we can do something about this.

‘We need to be talking with and about men more’

Cronin continues:

Last thing I want to say about language is when we talk about – it’s not a great phrase to trip off the tongue but domestic, family and sexual violence.

We are not talking as much about sexual violence and we rarely use the word “incest”.

We need to talk more about sexual violence.

Cronin says the national plan to end violence against women uses the word ‘men’ 129 times, but women is used 543 times.

Four times more than we talk about men. We need to be talking with and about men more.

We need to use ‘less passive language’ when we talk about DV, commissioner says

Micaela Cronin makes the point that Australia needs to do better in the way it speaks about violence.

The way we use language is important. We have come a long way from talking about violence, domestic violence, and equating it with a black eye.

We are much more sophisticated in understanding that it is now about patterns of behaviour and talk about coercive control and the need to talk about social and systemic entrapment.

So language is important.

We often talk about violence, but when we say that it’s important to recognise that it is broader than physical violence. We also offer quite passive language. We talk about violence against women, rather than men’s violence.

We use language that doesn’t make it as visible as it needs to be, that it’s predominantly men who perpetrate violence and it is predominantly against women. We talk about missing and lost women and children rather than women who have been actively disappeared and murdered. We need to be stronger and clearer and use less passive language.

Domestic violence commissioner addresses National Press Club

The domestic, family and sexual violence commissioner, Micaela Cronin, is delivering the press club speech ahead of the tabling of her inaugural report on the issue.

We will bring you the main parts of the speech and then the bits you need to know from the question and answer.

Linda Burney to deliver valedictory speech this afternoon

Former minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney, will deliver her valedictory speech to the House of Representatives just after 4pm today.

Burney announced she would be retiring last month and stepped away from the front bench.

Deepfake pornography bill passes Senate

Shorten on NDIS: ‘Telling the truth about the scheme seems to upset people’

Shorten apologises for period products being labelled ‘lifestyle’ products in draft NDIS plan

Going through the press conference Bill Shorten just held, he also included an apology for period products being labelled as “lifestyle” products under the draft NDIS plan.

First of all, an apology. This is about putting out a list which by the way the government has done before. No good deed goes unpunished.

(That is a reference to this government being the first to put out a list).

He says the amendments will clear it up, and that period products designed for people with a disability will be accessible under the scheme.

Private market ‘has not and will not’ solve housing crisis, leader of inquiry says

AAP reports Australia has sanctioned 20 Somali members of designated terrorist organisation Al Shabaab.

The sanctions largely target senior leaders.

From the AAP report:

They stem from a United Nations Security Council resolution and subsequent committee targeting Al Shabaab urging members to put in place an arms embargo, travel bans and asset freezes.

It also prohibited the import of charcoal from Somalia.

The Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group was blamed by the Somali government for killing dozens of civilians and injuring hundreds more during an explosion at a beach restaurant in the capital Mogadishu in early August.

Militants from the group also captured a UN helicopter carrying out a medical evacuation that made an emergency landing in central Somalia in January.

American forces killed leader senior leader Maalim Ayman in an operation with the Somali army in December 2023.

He was responsible for planning terrorist attacks in Somalia and nearby countries, a Somalian minister said at the time when confirming the operation.

Bill Shorten has never found an ‘I told you so’ he’s been able to walk past. He tells the journalists gathered at the press conference:

Some of you have been writing that the states are not going to work with us. well, you’re going to need a new [headline] because we are getting on with it.

Shorten said that cuts to growth (what the government would have spent) should not be confused with cuts to the NDIS.

If people think we are spending less than we thought we spend, it’s a cut.

The scheme has increased [in terms of] the number of people on the scheme from last year and in outlay of what we have spent. But generally, we are seeing a moderating. Lower than forecast growth in terms of outlays. And we will see what this produces next week in the NDIA statement.

(The agency is due to hand down its latest financial statement next week)