The NSW Shadow Minister for Prevention of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, Jodie Harrison has called for “urgent action”, following the release of the annual report from the NSW Domestic Violence Death Review Team (DVDRT) on Tuesday.
First established in 2010, the DVDRT was created to review domestic violence related deaths in New South Wales and make recommendations to help.
Their aim is to improve the State’s responses to domestic violence and reduce the number of people-mainly women and children- who are killed each year.
In Australia, on average one woman is murdered every 10 days by an intimate partner.
In NSW specifically, there were 31,775 recorded incidents of domestic violence-related assaults in the 12 months to June 2022, and in the five years to December 2021, there were 137 domestic violence-related murders.
The DVDRT team releases a yearly report with recommendations to combat these statistics, but the latest report states that only two in five of the team’s recommendations have been implemented over the last 10 years.
This is especially alarming considering the DVDRT has made 122 recommendations since its first report in 2011-2012.
Harrison’s statement points out that the NSW Government supported, or supported in principle, 98 per cent of those recommendations, but have only delivered outcomes for 40 per cent.
The report highlighted that a majority of the 60 per cent of recommendations ignored have been aimed at primary prevention for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.
And yet, as identified in the NSW Domestic and Family Violence Plan, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are 32 times more likely than non-Aboriginal women to be hospitalised due to family violence injuries.
The NSW Liberal Nationals referred the recommendations for First Nations communities be considered alongside Closing the Gap targets for 2031, pushing it off 20 years since the time the recommendations were originally made.
“Taking twenty years to respond to calls for action is simply not good enough,” said Harrison. “Particularly when we are seeing incidences of domestic violence rise.”
Recommendations for increased specialist and coordinated support for child survivors of domestic violence have also been ignored by the government response, with DVDRT members expressing their “frustration” at the need to make multiple recommendations for this issue.
Domestic violence assault and sexual assault rates are increasing significantly across NSW over the last five years, according to the latest statistics from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics Research (BOCSAR).
Harrison says these dismal domestic violence statistics won’t change “without political will” and calls for Labor to “reiterate our commitment to take action against Domestic Violence in NSW”.