Already and this is this is the daily This is the daily. Ohs oh, now it makes sense.
Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Monday, the twenty ninth of April.
I'm Zara, I'm Sam.
It's being labeled as Australia's National shame.
Enough isn't us.
That's the message echoed by thousands of people it rallies around the country following a wave of violence against women.
Violent men may have to be part of the solution. You know someone who has been affected by domestic family violence and genderbates violence and you need to step up and do more.
So far this year, twenty seven women have been killed in acts of gender based violence. Now, the country's Domestic Violence Commissioner is convening a crisis meeting of leaders from across the country to discuss what to do next and how to combat the rising rates of men's violence again women. In today's Deep Dive, we're going to discuss the context of this issue, what the government is saying, what we heard from the rallies over the weekend, and what comes
next in this conversation. But for Sam, the.
Headlines, Australia has committed another one hundred million dollars towards Ukraine's war efforts. With the assistance package announced by Defense Minister Richard Miles in his visit to Ukraine over the weekend, it takes Australia's total contributions since Russia's invasion of Ukraine to eight hundred and eighty million dollars. As part of his trip, Miles also visited Poland, where he discussed Australia's participation in a multinational program to train Ukrainian armed forces personnel.
In the UK, Iraq has criminalized same sex relationships, introducing a maximum of a fifteen year prison sentence if found guilty. According to a copy of the law scene by Reuters, the law is designed to quote protect Iraqi society from moral depravity and was backed by Iraq's large conservative coalition. The law also imposes a one to three year prison sentence for anyone who changes their quote biological gender.
The UK has predicted a more than fifty percent increase in strokes by twenty thirty five. That's according to the National Stroke Association. It expects the number of strokes will increase from one hundred thousand to over one hundred and fifty thousand, and will set the National Health Service back almost one hundred and forty four billion Australian dollars. The chief executive of the Stroke Association said the demand will quote be unsustainable by twenty thirty five.
And today's good news. A new study has found that conservation projects and investments are slowing the overall decline of biodiversity. Published in the Journal of Science, the study found that two thirds of conservation efforts either improved the state of biodiversity or at least slow declines. The study calls for conservation efforts to be scaled.
Up in order to meet global targets.
This deep dive is going to include discussions about domestic and family violence. If you or anyone you know needs help, you can reach out to one eight hundred respect on one eight hundred seven three seven seven three to two. Over the last few weeks, the national conversation has been dominated by calls for greater action to protect women and
girls from gender based violence. Now. This culminated over the weekend in national rallies that were held across the country, with PM Anthony Albanesi even joining protesters in Canberra yesterday and Zara.
This is obviously a massive issue but before we get to what the response needs to be or what's being called for, can you set out in really clear terms for us what exactly the state of play is.
Yes. So, at least twenty seven women that we know of have died in Australia in twenty twenty four in violent attacks. And the reason we know this is because there's a research project called Counting Dead Women and that collates all of these figures in one place on Facebook. Now the twenty seven women so far, so we're in April as we speak. The number of deaths that we have seen so far this year represents a significant increase from the same time period last year in twenty twenty three.
So the numbers vary again because it can sometimes be pretty difficult with reporting around these crimes. But the ABC last week said eleven more women had died violently in twenty twenty four compared to the same time period last year. Even since that article was published, another woman has been murdered, so that figure is now out of date. Put another way, until recently, an average of one woman was being killed a week. Now that average has risen to almost one
every four days. And as people were marching in the streets over the weekend, calling from an end to this gender based violence. A Perth man was charged with murder after he allegedly assaulted the woman he lived with and
set fire to their whole. Now, that story that was reported over the weekend came after a particularly horrific week that included news that twenty eight year old Molly Ticehurst had been found dead at her home with her former partner, who was out on bail and who breached an apprehended
violence order was the person charged with her murder. Now, we won't go through each of the incidents that have happened this year, but if you do want to know more, you can look at destroy the Joints Counting Dead Women page and again that's become a resource that lots of news outlets have started to rely on to track these deaths.
Sos Ovia said, there is a lot of media attention on the issue of gender based violence at the moment. I mean we only had to look at the size of the rallies over the weekend in every capital city, but what is actually been done about it?
Yeah, So the Domestic Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner, her name's MICHAELA. Cronin She's called a crisis meeting for next Tuesday, and that's in response to the rising rates of gender based violence that we are seeing reported now. The meeting is designed to bring together decision makers, academics and key organizations who are all working in this space to try to figure out what comes next after this national conversation.
So we know that Teran Chaula, who we spoke to on the pod last week, Amani Hater, and Alison Scott, who have all lost women in their families due to gender based violence, they'll also attend to the meeting, so there will be people with lived experience there to inform that conversation. And the National Roundtable is specifically looking at ways to deliver the federal government's National Plan to End
Violence against Women and Children. Now, this is the strategy that is at the centerpiece of how the government is trying to respond to this issue, and I think it's important to talk about what that strategy aimes to do because it's an extremely lofty ambition. It aims to eradicate gendered violence against women and girls over the next ten years.
It's abundantly obvious to anyone paying attention that, based on the statistics that I mentioned before, We are not getting any closer to that goal, but in fact we are going backward if year on year those stats are getting worse, and so the government has a very big job ahead of them if they want to get close to this goal. At the rallies over the weekend, the participants issued five key demands, and I'll just quickly run through them. So
number one the declaration of a national emergency. Number two, mandatory victim blaming prevention training for police, media and first responders. Number three, alternative reporting options for violence victims. Number four the media to wait forty eight hours before identifying violence victims. And number five for the government to give better, more sustainable funding for organizations with five year minimum commitments.
And how has the government responded to the spike in deaths this year and their plan going forward?
Well, As I said at the top, Anthony Albernezi actually walked with protesters at the rallies held over the weekend, and before the rally he wrote on x violence against women is not a problem that women should have to solve. Governments need to do better, men need to step up and as a society we must do better. We know there is so much more to do and we will keep working. And we've had basically similar sentiments reflected across
the government and from Anthony Albernesi's ministers. We had the Attorney General Mark Dreyfus saying last week that it's time for men to step up to combat gender based violence, and Minister for Women Katie Gallaher saying that this is a crisis and that women don't feel safe, you know, saying things like fifty percent of the population in this country have to think about what it means to park your car in a dark space, and what it means to walk by yourself, and what it means to do
anything by yourself.
Okay, And if we heard from the opposition on this and is stretching across the aisle, yeah.
I mean, this is one of those rare moments where we are seeing complete bipartisanship. We've had Opposition leader Peter Dudden echoing the calls for greater actions, saying society is failing women at the moment. But it is very clear, as I said, that the dial isn't shifting, and so it is going to take a bipart as an effort to rethink the ways that we are addressing this issue, and Sam, I've been doing a lot of reading here because I think there's been so much discourse about how
we're failing, how we're not doing any better. But I'm yet to see many people come up with a solution that we need to teach boys and men to respect
women more and that that will end gendered violence. But I think one of the most productive pieces that I read, and I'll throw it in our show notes in case anyone wants to do some further reading on this, was something that gender violence expert Jess Hill wrote, which was about the fact that the government basically need to transform the way that they are approaching this issue and start
from scratch with a completely different strategy. And she wrote this full long paper with Professor Michael Salter, but then she also published something in The Guardian that was basically an abridged version, and she goes through step by step
what she believes needs to be done. And I think for anyone feeling particularly helpless after the last couple of weeks and what we've seen and what we've heard, I think something like this can be rather helpful in thinking about solutions because a lot of people are angry a lot of people want to do better, but we need to actually walk the walk, and we need to see the government lay out a very clear plan of how they actually want to eradicate this gender based violence, because
what's being done at the moment clearly is not working.
That's right, and we'll put that link in today's show notes. And just once again, if you need any help, or you know anyone that needs any help, you can reach out to one eight hundred respect on one eight hundred seventy three seven seven, three to two. That's all I've got time for today. We'll speak to you again tomorrow. My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda
Bungelung Kalgodin woman from Gadigol Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres s right island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.