Dr LAWRENCE(4.24 p.m.) —I want to make a few comments today because it is important that, while we have been addressing the question of gun control for some time and its significance in reducing the level of violence in our community, certainly the capacity for the mass killings that we have seen not only in Tasmania, very sadly, but also on other occasions in Victoria and in New South Wales, to give recent examples, we do not ignore the wider question of community violence and we do not restrict our objections and investigations to matters that are perhaps popular in the public imagination, including the treatment of violence on television. I would certainly urge the government that in looking at the question of community violence it look very closely at its own programs—programs that have been developed partly in response to the last committee that was established to examine violence, the National Committee on Violence. Its recommendations, some 138 of them made in 1990, provide the basis for a very substantial set of solutions to community violence.

A number of programs are in jeopardy right now. That is the warning I want to issue. The Office of the Status of Women has had carriage of substantial education programs that deal with the question not just of domestic violence—although principally that—but also violence in the community directed towards women, which is endemic in our community, sadly. The Office of the Status of Women have already been told that they will have some 46 per cent of their staff, of their programs, cut. They have been told, as I understand it, that there is to be no program delivery. That would include the whole of that substantial program directed at changing attitudes towards violence against women.

We have seen considerable success in that agenda already, beginning in 1987, when we found some attitudes towards violence against women that certainly deserved to be condemned and repudiated. We have made substantial progress in conjunction with the states through national leadership and a national campaign to at least get members of the community to recognise that violence against women, whether in the domestic circumstance or elsewhere, is simply not acceptable. To have that program put under threat, as it appears to be, and certainly without leadership, is of growing concern to me and to many other groups in the community.

I notice that the coalition through its minister responsible committed itself to a national summit on domestic violence to be held later this year. That was something that it promised in the election campaign. How it relates to these broader questions of ongoing programs is not clear. Senator Newman, who is responsible, suggested to a meeting of women's organisations last week that the Office of the Status of Women would organise it, that it would be a summit of 100 experts and that it would be small and focused rather than a talkfest. That is all very well, but having a steering committee of public servants is hardly representative of the wider community.

At this stage I would have to say that I think the focus is wrong and the process is wrong. Why, for instance, limit it to domestic violence? It should be broader, so that issues concerning sexual assault and violence against women generally that occur outside the home can also be discussed. The focus of this summit is no doubt wrong because the process of setting it up is wrong, not least because the minister has already excluded a number of non-government organisations from the steering committee. For instance, the Women's Emergency Services Network is not included on the steering committee. I would like to know whether the minister believes that an organisation that supports on a daily basis some 12,000 women and children would have nothing to contribute to the organisation of such a summit. I would have thought they were critical. She says she wants a summit of experts. I would have to say again that the view that these people who deliver services on a daily basis are not expert is insulting.

A whole range of programs is at risk at the moment, including women's health programs, family planning funding, and accommodation. These are all critical areas that support women and their families, who are the subject already of violence in the home and who are at risk. We have already initiated a substantial legal reform process and yet there are threatened cuts to Family Court mediation and counselling. Everyone knows that matters surrounding divorce, property settlement and custody often provoke violence. To cut those programs is short-sighted indeed.

In addition to that, there are a number of threats to family incomes, threats to the Medicare rebate, extra state taxes and charges, extra costs to families in Austudy and HECS, and there will be a particular impact for regional communities in things like cutting the diesel fuel rebate. These will all have an impact on families' incomes. Again, financial problems are almost always likely to produce difficulties in the domestic environment and the wider family. So if the government is really serious about the control of violence in our community, and although we certainly welcome the controls on guns and firearms legislation—we have always been behind it—it must be much broader than that. (Time expired)