UN Women Australia invited national advocates to answer the question of what it will take to end violence against women in Australia as part of its Safe. Everywhere. Always. campaign.
Family violence advocate and Victorian Multicultural Commissioner Tarang Chawla, children's advocate Conor Pall and Melbourne Law School professor Heather Douglas discussed the intersecting drivers of violence, the role of men and healthy masculinity and the urgent need for legal and systems reform in the context of rising digital abuse.
Mr Chawla, whose younger sister Nikita was murdered by her partner in 2015, said men's silence was complicity when it came to violence against women.
"We have this culture where men are almost rewarded for not speaking up, because men who do speak up are often ostracised from the group, or they're avoided altogether and I think that we have to change that," he said.
"We have to overcome this idea that the men who speak out are the problem, and actually look at men's silence as complicity, and look at men's silence as allowing the conditions for violence to flourish."
About one in four women and one in 14 men have experienced physical and/or sexual violence from an intimate partner since the age of 15, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare statistics have shown.
People must not become numb to these statistics, UN Women chief executive Simone Clarke told AAP.
"We talk about violence in isolation but these are people's mothers, sisters, daughters, individuals with lives and hopes and dreams," she said.
"If we normalise violence then that becomes self-perpetuating ... prevention is the cure."
Technology is increasingly being weaponised against women, with 53 per cent of women in Australia reporting online abuse or harassment.
More needed to be done to address the increased use of technology to facilitate abuse, Ms Clarke said.
The NSW government has announced a landmark strategy to respond to domestic and family violence perpetrators.
It will focus on stopping, disrupting and changing perpetrators' harmful behaviours by rolling out a series of actions.
The strategy will continue work already underway including the Men's Behaviour Change Program, strengthening services, building evidence on effective interventions, improving collaboration between services and evaluating progress.
It is a historic moment in Australia's efforts to end men's use of family violence, No to Violence chief executive Phillip Ripper said.
"By placing responsibility back on the source of harm, the Minns Government is leading the nation," he said.
"We now call on the commonwealth and all other states and territories to follow NSW's lead and develop a coordinated national approach focused on people who use violence."
In 2024, NSW Police recorded more than 100,000 domestic violence–related crimes, and 39 people in the state were killed in domestic violence-related murders.
In the last 10 years, domestic violence sexual offences increased by 103 per cent, domestic violence assaults by 31 per cent and breaches of apprehended violence orders by 90 per cent.
"It is essential to prevent violence from happening in the first place, with work having already begun in primary prevention," NSW Minister for the Prevention of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Jodie Harrison said.
"This strategy is the next step. Real change requires addressing the perpetration of violence, to strengthen our responses to people who use domestic and family violence."
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