Strengthen knowledge sharing and accountability
The Review recognises that prevention through systems, industries and other mechanisms also requires a consideration of wider structural levers, such as those established to provide national leadership on DFSV. The Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commission (the DFSV Commission) is an established executive agency and non-corporate Commonwealth entity, which promotes national coordination and consistency of data and evidence on best practice across a range of DFSV violence policies and system interactions.282 Importantly, the DFSV Commission engages with people with lived experience to help amplify their voices and ensure that their diverse experiences are heard – to inform the development of policies and improve service delivery.
The Review considers it essential to prevention efforts that the DFSV Commission be established as a statutory authority with expanded functions – recognising the priority of this role in the context of the ongoing national agenda, as well as in the context of our wider international obligations under CEDAW, enabled at a national level by the external affairs power. This national model is consistent with the approach adopted on the establishment of a national Children’s Commissioner.
The Review also recommends that the DFSV Commission perform a clearinghouse function, with a national repository of practice knowledge and stronger powers to gather information. This would contribute to the implementation of Action 2 of the First Action (Plan 2023-2027) under the National Plan – on improving the national evidence base on gender-based violence. Operation of a clearinghouse would bring together community-based evidence and practice with the wider evidence base for prevention, early intervention, response and recovery and healing. This would contribute to increased efficiency and effectiveness of delivery of genuinely integrated responses to DFSV. Greater national consistency would make it easier for victim-survivors to navigate the DFSV system.
The Review also recommends that the DFSV Commission continue to monitor the implementation of the National Plan, including associated funding. This would promote transparency and accountability across both the Commonwealth and jurisdictional governments and increase visibility of jurisdictions’ investment. Within this remit, the DFSV Commission should also monitor implementation of the recommendations of this Rapid Review.
| Recommendation 19 |
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| The Commonwealth Government to expand the functions and powers of the National DFSV Commission and establish it as a statutory authority. Expanded powers should include performing a clearinghouse function, having stronger powers to gather information, and to continue monitoring the implementation and funding associated with the National Plan. |
Collect better data to measure prevention and understand perpetration
The Review recognises the efforts of Australia’s existing data agencies to facilitate access to information on available data and gaps on DFSV in Australia. The Review also recognises that there is considerable data and outcomes work underway under the National Plan, which acknowledges and is working to improve data on DFSV.
A national emergency as complex as gender-based violence requires rigorous and comprehensive data and evidence. Every data point tells us where we should be focused to unlock the prevention potential. This report reflects on how the online world contributes to gender-based violence, but the collection and sharing of data, evidence and information is a key means by which technology can facilitate appropriate responses and help to prevent the death of women and children. Australia is a complex federation with inconsistent data definitions and methods for collecting and reporting information. This challenge is not insurmountable, however, and can be addressed – motivated by a recognition of this crisis by the community and the highest levels of governments through National Cabinet.
While Australia has some helpful population-level data, we lack disaggregated data on our most marginalised communities affected by DFSV, particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and those in remote parts of Australia, such as the Torres Strait.283 Australia also has very limited data on the prevalence, extent and nature of perpetration.284
Data and evidence is needed to inform policy and program responses, and to measure their efficacy. The Review recommends that Commonwealth, state and territory governments continue to work together to address data gaps. It also strongly urges governments to address evidence and data-informed policy that is grounded in rigorous evaluation and adapt to new knowledge as it emerges. This recommendation reinforces Action 2 of the First Action Plan (2023-2027) under the National Plan, which focuses on improving the national evidence base on gender-based violence.
In strengthening data collection processes, and in line with Reform Area 4 of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Action Plan 2023-2025, the Review acknowledges the principles of Indigenous data sovereignty and self-determination and reinforces the need to implement these. Shifting ownership of DFSV data collected about First Nations peoples to the First Nations organisations that deliver community-based services is a key step to improving our data ecosystems and contributing to better safety outcomes for First Nations families and communities. Any continued measurement of the National Plan must be supported by qualitative and quantitative measures, including new data that emerges over time.
Indigenous Data Sovereignty
“Indigenous data sovereignty is a key tenet of self-determination. Furthermore, it is the right of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to exercise authority over and govern the creation, collection, ownership and use of their data. Therefore, data created and collated for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities should maintain a two-way information exchange to ensure Indigenous data sovereignty. This two-way exchange requires that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations be involved in all stages of the design, research, service development and evaluation models through formal and genuine partnership.“285
Reform Area Four of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Action Plan 2023-2025 focuses on evidence and data-ecosystems. In particular, it focuses on the need to explore opportunities to share access to data and information at a regional level, as per Closing the Gap Priority Reform Four.286 Priority Reform Four sets out that data and information sharing encompass the following:
- Partnerships are in place to guide the improved collection, access, management and use of data to inform shared decision-making.
- Governments provide communities and organisations with access to the same data and information they use to make decisions.
- Governments collect, handle and report data at sufficient levels of disaggregation, and in an accessible and timely way.
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and organisations are supported by governments to build capability and expertise in collecting, using and interpreting data in a meaningful way.
| Recommendation 20 |
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The Commonwealth and state and territory governments to further strengthen data collection, in relation to DFSV. This includes:
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Strengthen death review processes and evidence on suicide and DFSV-victimisation
Finally, the Review recognises that, while we work to unlock each prevention potential, we must continue to learn from where our efforts have failed. Death review processes provide a critical lens into the points of intervention that could have prevented a homicide.287 They also offer a cross-disciplinary and novel way of looking at systemic and other failures that need to be fixed to prevent future deaths. This approach is central to addressing gender-based violence and deaths in an effective way and should be prioritised as an area for continued resourcing and national coordination.
Despite this, inconsistent approaches to domestic and family violence death reviews operate across Australia. All jurisdictions have or are in the process of developing formalised domestic and family violence death reviews, with the exception of Tasmania.288 The Review therefore recommends that all states and territories establish, resource and uplift death review processes, including by learning and embedding insights from death reviews across the country.
The Review notes that, in establishing and uplifting death review processes, priority must be put on maintaining cultural appropriateness at each stage of an investigation into the death of a First Nations person, particularly in ensuring that the impact of the work of the jurisdiction does not perpetuate cycles of grief and loss on First Nations families. The Review recommends that death review panels across jurisdictions include First Nations support units and operate in line with related protocols.
Further to the alarming numbers featured earlier in this report, the Review recognises that Australia has yet to include suicide related to DFSV-victimisation in homicide data. Noting that many factors contribute to a person’s decision to take their own lives, evidence suggests that suicides related to DFSV-victimisation potentially account for at least three times the number of female homicide deaths.
Victorian suicides linked to family violence
The Victorian Suicide Register, maintained by the Coroner’s Court of Victoria, contains a “violence between deceased and partner/family member” field to record any evidence of family violence.289 In response to a request from this Review, the Victorian Coroner’s Court provided the most recent available data (from 2009 to 2016) on female suicides where the deceased had ever experienced family violence. This data revealed that 210 (17.5 per cent) of female suicides over that period had experienced family violence.290
Suicide and DFSV among young people
Research shows that young people who experience domestic and family violence are at greater risk of suicide, or suicidal ideation.291 For example, one study found that young people who described being “beaten by their parents” were almost twice as likely to report suicidal ideation, and almost three times as likely to attempt suicide during adolescence.292
An international lens: Domestic homicides and suspected victim suicides in the United Kingdom
The national Domestic Homicide Project, which examines all deaths identified by police as domestic abuse in the United Kingdom, found that a total of 242 domestic abuse-related deaths were recorded between April 2022 to March 2023.293 Of these, 93 were suspected victim suicide following domestic abuse, with the number of suspected victim-suicides following DFSV overtaking intimate partner homicides for the first time, potentially as a result of improved reporting and data recording by police officers.294
Incorporating figures of suicides related to DSFV victimisation is consistent with international practice. For example, In February 2024, the UK Government announced that Domestic Homicide Death reviews would now been expanded to include Domestic Abuse Related Death Reviews.295
Similarly, while a Victorian Commission for Children and Young People 2019 investigation into children who died by suicide and were known to child protection concluded that the lives of these “lost but not forgotten” young people “were marred by family violence, dysfunction and often chronic neglect”, a disconnection persists between DSFV-victimisation and suicide in terms of government reporting and data collection in relation to young people296. For example, the Australian Bureau of Statistics has linked a range of risk factors to youth suicide, while largely overlooking the specific role of trauma.297 This is despite the association between experiences of DSFV during childhood and youth suicide being well established internationally.298
The potential to prevent further suicide through DFSV-victimisation is deserving of further investigation. The Review recommends that intensive work occur to learn from overseas death review processes and to explore ways to improve Australian data to reflect the impact, prevalence and interconnectedness of DFSV victimisation and suicide. The Review also recommends a national inquiry into the relationship between DFSV-victimisation and suicide – so that the true scale of the national emergency facing Australia can finally be understood.
Starkly, evidence from Safe Steps shows that, when governments underfund crisis response, the results can be fatal. Reports from Safe Steps indicate that, three women suicided in Victorian motels in 2023, while they were awaiting a space in refuge.299
| Recommendation 21 |
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The Commonwealth and state and territory governments to develop a consistent approach to death review processes and improve knowledge on the relationship between DFSV and suicide. This should include:
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