2025-12-09
On Day 17 in Western Australia, the crisis of men’s violence against women and children remains effectively unchanged.
The Cook Labor Government’s announcements over the past fortnight of the 16 Days in WA campaign fall far short of what is required to meet the scale of harm occurring every day in our state.
The end of this campaign must mark the beginning of a serious, statewide shift in how WA responds to violence against women and children.
On Sunday, the Cook Government quietly released WA's first ever Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Strategy with no actual funding attached to it.
The Greens (WA) Women and Children’s Safety spokesperson Jess Beckerling MLC said that the State Government must set a target to eradicate men’s violence against women and children and fully resource the work required.
“Violence against women and children is an emergency, yet our crisis response system is still not funded like one.
“A strategy without funding is not a commitment to solving the problem; it’s an absolute failure of the Government to provide safety and support to victim-survivors.
“Survivors and frontline workers were expecting a plan for action but instead, they were just given another document with no resources to implement that plan.
“In 12 years from 2000–2012, 90 young men across Australia were killed in one-punch attacks. Governments rightly decided that the only acceptable number was zero.
“In that same timeframe in WA alone, 180 women and children were murdered by men. No woman or child in Western Australia should feel unsafe in their own home. The only acceptable number of women and children murdered by men in WA is zero.
“Thousands of women and children seeking safety are still being turned away. Not because their situation isn’t serious, but because there is literally nowhere for them to go.
“We need two fully resourced streams of work: one that keeps all women and children safe, and another that stops men’s violence. The scale of unmet need is known; the Government’s refusal to meet it is a political choice.”
The Greens (WA) spokesperson for Stopping Men’s Violence Dr Brad Pettitt MLC said the responsibility for ending men’s violence must sit with men, particularly men in positions of power.
“It’s easy for men to assume that because we personally are not violent, that the crisis of men’s violence against women and children isn’t our problem. But it should be, because if you’re not calling it out then you are part of the problem.
“More than 1 in 3 Australian men aged 18 to 65 have used intimate partner violence in their lifetime, and 120,000 men nationally begin using it for the first time each and every year.
"In WA, women and children accounted for more than 98% of family and domestic violence victims in 2024, while men accounted for 81% of perpetrators, and 93% of sexual violence perpetrators.
“This is the reality we live in. So what is the Government going to do about it? Pleas for respect are not a plan. Calling out bad behaviour is not a strategy.
“The 16 Days in WA campaign has shown that we need more than just messages about respect and open ended strategies with no resources, we need a funded plan that keeps women and children safe from men’s violence every day of the year.
“Nothing less than a fully funded, statewide response, and a government dedicated to achieving a target of ending men’s violence against women and children will suffice.”