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Cake day: December 25th, 2025

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  • We may not need more reviews but we sure need more effective action against the violence. We’re looking at femicide alone here but the number of women with injuries from domestic violence is significant and then there’s the emotional violence perpetrated not only on adult women but on the children who live in dv situations over which they have no control. Absolutely shocking.

    According to Australian Femicide Watch, 29 women and nine children have been killed by violence so far this year…

    …it’s clear, from last week’s budget, that the Albanese Government is far from throwing “everything it can” at the issue.

    The billions in funding the Women’s Statement noted were derived from repackaging existing funding announcements.

    The $717 million in relevant new commitments we counted addresses everything from the ADF military sexual violence inquiry to community housing for young people at risk and the child support scheme reform, spread out over the next four to five years, so around $150 to $ 180 million a year. The $4.4 billion the Australian Government has contributed to addressing the issues is the cumulative amount since 2022, amounting to around $1.1 billion a year across the entire National Plan to End Violence Against Women.

    Last week’s Budget also committed an additional $53 billion to defence over the next decade, amounting to $5.3 billion a year in new defence spending. That one year in additional defence spending amounts to more than what’s being outlined for the entire National Plan to End Violence Against Women invested over four years.

    And to really demonstrate the capacity to throw “everything” at the issue, consider what Australia loses from fossil fuel subsidies and forgone tax revenue, with this Budget indicating it amounts to $19 billion annually, according to the Climate Council.

    Clearly, the funding allocated to end violence against women and children isn’t enough because we’re far from seeing a change in the number of those murdered.

    https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/eds-blog/five-women-two-children-killed-since-budget-but-pm-claims-theyre-throwing-everything-at-the-issue/

























  • I do understand your viewpoint and respect it but cannot agree.

    You could posit that Shoebridge said more than the ‘comfortable’ description of the current govt approach to Israel etc but that this could not be spelled out for fear by the author, Paul Gregoire, of getting into legal trouble, or, that Shoebridge himself did not want to make waves that could damage his Party. We’ll never know but speaking like this is often a sign of a system that is ‘not comfortable’ with openness.

    there are often unidentified reasons for policy and decisions

    Yes I know but to keep quiet with the bare-faced evidence that your citizens are being assaulted by your ally illegally, to keep quiet about the ongoing murder of Palestinians and the mass destruction of Sthn Lebanon with thousands already killed is very suspect, no matter how hush-hush the reasons might be. The UN has condemned this activity and so should everyone. These are mass crimes. And assaulting foreign nationals on international waters is also breaking the law. Silence is condoning the breakdown of the international order.

    Government quietly got Julian Assange home.

    We are talking of one high-profile figure and I was overjoyed when our govt finally got him out imprisonment. It saved his life. The above situation is the opposite. Whatever the ‘unidentified reasons’ for the silence and the continued support directly or indirectly of Israeli military action, it has cost at least 100,000 lives and counting. Keeping silent about that but being super public about supporting the illegal bombing of Iran which has caused thousands more deaths and will probably continue on is… what would you say?

    Germans and others were castigated after WW2 for turning a blind eye or supporting what was happening to Jews and other minorities in Europe during the war but what many of us are doing now (including our own govt) looks very similar. I am sure they have ‘unidentified reasons’ but the result is still criminal and many lives are being obliterated, including tens of thousands of innocent children. I cannot excuse putting people’s lives behind political expediency.