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The disproportionate number of First Nations women affected by violence is at the forefront of roundtable talks in Canberra, where the country's gendered violence experts, service directors and survivor-advocates have gathered.
The national roundtable, called by Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner Micaela Cronin, today focused on the rates of Australian women dying as a result of violence, particularly women who are murdered, missing, or have died by suicide following violence.
Lived experience, experiences of frontline services, lessons from inquiries and the need for accurate data in the sector were on the agenda.
Members of roundtable discussions included researcher Jess Hill, national organisations Our Watch, ANROWS, SNAICC, Movember and The Man Cave, and representatives from local services DVNSW and Respect Victoria.
Advocates Shirleen Campbell, Tarang Chawla and Dixie Link-Gordon are also involved.
Palawa woman and chief investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Kyllie Cripps, told the roundtable that while individual stories of the circumstances of women's disappearances or murder were powerful in their own right, it was the power of accurate data shedding light on the number who had died that allowed researchers to see "patterns in system failures, in risk management, and in types of violence we have yet to prioritise".
There have been calls from multiple gendered violence researchers for years for a more comprehensive numbers of women that have been killed and the government plans to launch an online dashboard in the middle of the year to address this.
An investigation by Four Corners in 2022, found that at least 315 Indigenous women were murdered or killed in suspicious circumstances between 2000 and 2022. Some of these women's bodies have never been found.
Antoinette Braybrook, an advocate for Aboriginal women's safety and the chief executive of Djirra, who joined the roundtable, said Indigenous women had told legal services they often "fear the system as much as their abuser".
Djirra said at least seven of the 64 women killed in 2023 were First Nations women.
What the data can tell us and how it can inform strategies
Professor Cripps said there was no "one universal intervention or response for reducing gender-based violence in a diverse, multicultural society like Australia".
She broke it down into a few elements that could make up the overall approach to address the crisis that included independent research of current and planned response and prevention efforts.
She said contextual analysis and Indigenous-centred research approaches that include First Nation communities first would help provide more informed responses to the violence crisis.
The professor researched the deaths of 151 Indigenous women and intimate partner homicides and released her report last month.
She found that 60 per cent of the Indigenous women who were killed died by blunt force trauma.
She said that data informed how perpetrators felt in the moment, what it looked and felt like, and understanding the perpetrator’s anger in the moment.
Data collected about the way women were killed and the patterns of offending of the perpetrator could inform prevention messaging, Professor Cripps said.
She also found more than half of the women whose deaths she researched had been in relationships with their partners for four or more years.
"These are longstanding relationships that are not easily walked away from, particularly when children are involved, finances are enmeshed and when housing is in short supply," she said.
Professor Cripps told the roundtable that "death data" was not the only data that should be analysed, suggesting "hospital data", should be included because it would include cases where someone had presented in the ICU.
'Real action on really obvious red flags'
Muriel Bamblett, co-chair of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Family Safety Plan steering committee, would like to see urgent system reform to help First Nations women.
"[There needs to be] real action on really obvious red flags," Ms Bamblett said.
"Aboriginal women deserve to be seen and heard.
"It's time to make men accountable for their actions.
"All accountability is placed on the woman's shoulder, and the system is designed to make them feel that they are the person in the wrong and have to prove themselves to all services."
The commissioner had hoped the roundtable would mean a "cohesive, cross-sectoral approach to advancing objectives" of the 10-year National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children, including discussion of suicide following violence.
"Too many women are taking their own lives following their experiences of family violence. We must all take urgent, targeted action to accelerate the objective of the National Plan — to end violence against women and children," Ms Cronin said.
"This is a national crisis.
"We know it is a complex problem which requires an integrated, multi-pronged approach. We need to break down the silos and bring people together from across the country to address this complex issue."
The roundtable continues this afternoon.