In April this year, a 33 year-old mother of four was stabbed to death in front of lunchtime shoppers in Tim Watts' west Melbourne electorate.
Create a free account to read this article
or signup to continue reading
It is alleged that after spending the morning in court over a family violence order, the woman's partner of 18 years killed her in broad daylight.
The death of Fiona Joy Warzywoda sparked a furious debate in the community of Sunshine about men's violence against women. And led Watts – a first-term Labor MP – to look more closely at the issue.
About one in three women has experienced physical violence and almost one in five has experienced sexual violence since the age of 15. On average, one woman is killed in Australia every week as the result of intimate partner violence.
Then 31, Watts was a federal MP, with three degrees and careers in law, political advising and corporate management behind him. Yet he was unaware of the scope of domestic violence.
"I was frankly ashamed about how little I knew about it. And I became more ashamed as I learnt about the scale of it in our community," Watts told Fairfax Media.
"I live a privileged existence ... it wasn't something that had directly touched me."
So the MP started thinking about the issue and all the women and girls he knew, including his young daughter. "It makes it difficult to look the other way."
Since April, the member for Gellibrand – one of Labor's safest seats – has been meeting with women's groups and domestic violence experts to learn more about the problem.
Former Victorian premier Joan Kirner is a constituent and has been giving him advice. He has also sat in on men's behaviour change programs, watching men "trying to take responsibility for their actions".
On Monday he is launching a new group, Parliamentarians Against Family Violence, with Coalition MPs Andrew Broad and Ken Wyatt. He reasons that if he did not know enough about the issue, it is likely his colleagues do not either.
There has been an encouraging response so far. About one-third of MPs and senators have RSVP'd to hear former Navy chief Vice Admiral Ray Griggs address the group.
And it is no coincidence that the group is being led by three male MPs. Watts says that not only do men need to show leadership and take responsibility for the problem, "there are some men who will only hear these messages if they're coming from other men".
Watts is proud of the fact that the Gillard government set up a national plan to reduce violence against women and their children in 2011 and notes that the Abbott government has recently released a section "action plan" under it. He wants to use the parliamentary group to ensure that bipartisanship continues on the issue.
But a national plan in and of itself is not enough. Last week at a Senate inquiry, women's groups questioned the plan, saying there is not enough funding at a local level and not enough clarity about how the plan will produce "meaningful" results.
Watts agrees that "a lot of areas need urgent funding".
He points to a women's service around the corner from his electorate office that has seen a 280 per cent increase in demand since the national plan was released in 2011, but only a 25 per cent increase in funding.
"We haven't planned at the back end for the consequences of that increase [in demand for help]," he says, conceding along with the need for more funding certainty under the Coalition, Labor should "probably" have provided more money upfront.
"The [national plan] provides the skeleton for our response, but we still need to put the flesh on the bones."
