Senator STOTT DESPOJA (10:10 PM) —I begin by acknowledging that tribute by Senator Stephens to Anna Lindh—a woman who was an impressive role model, a woman who campaigned for women's rights and a woman who died as a consequence of senseless violence.

Tonight I want to talk more broadly about the issue of violence against women. Domestic violence, as we all know, is a devastating epidemic that endures through several generations. It is an issue that crosses all classes, income groups and races. The issue of male violence against women has for years been couched in language that has been easier to stomach: re-termed `domestic violence'. The effect, of course, has been to take it back into homes and turn it into an issue that should be dealt with in the privacy of the home—thus making it off-limits to the public. It is difficult to measure domestic violence against women with any accuracy because it is a crime that remains mostly hidden. It is an issue that affects hundreds of thousands of women and children, and its repercussions not only ripple throughout our community but also impact on the business and economic sector through absenteeism and replacement costs to employers.

Tonight one angle I want to look at in relation to this issue, in the hope that it might convince the powers that be and the legislators to do something about it, is its economic impact. First, I turn to the statistics and figures. In 1996 the Australian Bureau of Statistics surveyed 6,300 Australian women for the Women's Safety Survey. The survey was designed to provide national estimates of the nature and extent of violence experienced by women in our country. It asked women about their experience of actual or threatened physical or sexual violence and found that, in relation to violence by a male partner, 2.6 per cent of women who were married or in a de facto relationship had experienced violence perpetrated by their current partner in the 12 months preceding the survey. The survey also looked at women's experience of violence throughout their lifetime and found that 23 per cent of women who had ever been married or in a de facto relationship had experienced violence in that relationship.

According to the 1996 Women's Safety Survey, 7.1 per cent of Australian women had experienced an incident of violence in the last 12 months, 4.9 per cent of Australian women had experienced physical violence by a man and 1.9 per cent of Australian women had experienced sexual violence by a man. According to the 2002 Crime and Safety Survey, 320,891 women had experienced an assault in the previous 12 months, which is fairly consistent with the 1996 survey figures. The Crime and Safety Survey detailed incidences of personal assault only, but if we focus on sexual assault then the figures show that 86 per cent of victims of sexual assault were women, accounting for 28,300 victims of sexual assault. Based on the 1996 Women's Safety Survey, the AIC conducted a secondary analysis of the data to assess women's fear of violence. The study found that 70 per cent of the 4,684 women surveyed were fearful when walking alone after dark.

Of course, it is very difficult to assess real trends. Crime victim surveys indicate that the majority of assaults upon women are not reported to the police where the victim knows the offender. Estimates of underreporting vary significantly. The 1998 ABS crime victim survey estimated that only 28 per cent of assaults and 33 per cent of sexual assaults are reported to police, whereas the 1996 survey indicated that only two out of every 10 women—or 18.6 per cent to be precise—who had been assaulted in the previous 12 months had reported the assault to police. Only those instances that are reported to the authorities are recorded in the official crime statistics data. Even then, domestic violence is not recorded as a category of assault distinct from other assaults, hence the difficulty in obtaining reliable statistical data on its incidence.

Crime victim surveys provide another measure of domestic violence, as these surveys include both reported and unreported incidents. However, there is no update of the 1996 Women's Safety Survey conducted by the ABS. In fact, the next survey is not planned until 2006. How can we treat this as a significant issue—one that we are supposedly putting resources and finances towards—when it will be a number of years before we have another survey? We are failing to implement an up-to-date system of collating crucial information that is needed in order to properly execute those program initiatives. In the context of the government's decision to take $10.1 million in underspent funds for domestic violence and sexual assault programs to fund fridge magnets, you can see why people get very upset about this issue.

In relation to the economic costs, a literature review conducted by the Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse pointed to both Australian and international literature, demonstrating the value of taking an economic perspective on domestic violence. It provides a powerful angle from which to view the consequences of domestic violence and further argues for social policies to improve services and protection for victims.

While the human impact of domestic violence is incalculable, the direct costs of staff absenteeism and replacement costs were estimated in 2000 to be over $30 million a year for Australian employers. The total cost to the corporate and business sector was estimated at $1.5 billion. In another study, back in 1991, the annual cost of domestic violence to state and Commonwealth governments was estimated to be around $400 million.

Academics have long argued that the value of economic studies on domestic violence lies in the potential to promote social policy and reduce violence against women. It must be highlighted that violence against women is a public problem, not a private one, because of the negative effects which are borne by all of society and not solely by the victims. Studies of the costs of violence are one means for strengthening the argument that violence against women is indeed a social problem which deserves to be seriously addressed. Information about the economic costs of domestic violence emphasises the seriousness of the problem and also identifies ways in which it penetrates the work of social services, community organisations, business and governments in Australia. Violence against women is enormously costly to the women who experience violence directly, and to women generally, as their lives are constrained by the fear of violence and even for governments, who have to pay money in order to ensure that the consequences of violence are addressed. It is a ubiquitous and debilitating criminal, social and health problem affecting individuals, communities, business and governments in Australia.

There are a number of international studies that show the costs of domestic violence in Switzerland, the US, Canada, the UK, Chile, Nicaragua and New Zealand. All of these demonstrate overwhelmingly that organisations and government must work in tandem to overcome this crippling social issue. For example, the annual cost of family violence in New Zealand is around $NZ1.2 billion. A UK study shows that it cost more than 5 million in 1996 for one particular area of London. According to the Swiss government, the cost of domestic violence is 400 million Swiss francs, or $US290 million, per annum. There are many other statistics—from Ontario, Canada, British Columbia.

Essentially, though, there is no best approach to estimating the economic costs of domestic violence. Most arguments about the value of bringing an economic perspective to the field of domestic violence are based on the assumption that identifying the enormous costs of domestic violence will result in increased efforts to eliminate it. In saying this, we need to work as a nation to improve—firstly, data collection, both to better estimate the prevalence of domestic violence and to better identify service usage by victims and perpetrators of domestic violence; secondly, evaluations for interventions and programs using experimental or quasi-experimental designs as an essential foundation for cost-effectiveness and cost-benefit analyses; and, thirdly, better methodologies for calculating the long-term social, educational and psychological impacts of domestic violence on women and children.

However, should the mounting evidence of the economic costs of domestic violence to women, children, the community and governments fail to result in increased commitment to the prevention and eradication of domestic violence, academics have issued the following challenge that I would like to repeat today:

I hope tonight that some of these figures will go some way towards convincing the powers that be that we need to address this issue.

At the risk of talking against a backdrop of tragedy this evening, I do want to commend Four Corners on what was a harrowing, compelling, moving and touching program on the Bali survivors. If fellow senators have not seen it, it was quite extraordinary. On a final note, I would also like to add my condolences on the tragedy that occurred in a domestic situation in Sydney this evening.