Tens of thousands of people marched against gendered violence on the weekend. As the eSafety commissioner’s fight with Elon Musk over censorship of violent terror continues, the Albanese Government sought to do something positive about gun violence by funding the long-discussed National Firearms Register.
Women and men are looking to governments, state and federal, to make them safe. Are they up to the task?
The man at the centre of all this in a political sense is federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, whose father’s family fled Nazi persecution in Europe to come to Australia – he understands what happens when violence gets out of control. Mr Dreyfus has spent his life in the service of the law, which was invented by humans to deal with this problem, even if it often fails.
National emergency
This year, women have died violently, on average, every four days at the hands of men in Australia – a grim record. Both Mr Dreyfus and Mr Albanese spoke in support of rallies against gender-based violence, but stopped short of agreeing with calls for a royal commission into domestic violence.
Labor insists that their national plan of 2022 to end violence against women is up to the job, if given more time, but critics have pointed out that only 17 of the promised 500 frontline DV workers are on the job, and much more needs to be done to end a dangerously accelerating cycle of violence.
‘We need to be working harder on the kinds of actions that have already been identified,’ said Mr Dreyfus, throwing the ball back to the states.
It’s yet to be seen if next month’s federal budget will include extra money for womens’ refuges, emergency housing (especially in rural areas), community development, education programs or mental health support, aimed at addressing what is overwhelmingly male violence towards women.
Meanwhile the government has flagged $161.3 million over four years to implement the long-discussed National Firearms Register, which appears to have been jolted into existence by the tragic events at Wieambilla in December 2022, although it probably wouldn’t have prevented it, with many unlicenced weapons involved.
Supported by Walter Mikac, whose family were murdered at Port Arthur, Attorney-General Dreyfus said the register would bring together all the information held by different police forces and authorities in a single, modern system. ‘Once established, police will know where firearms are, who owns them, and what other risks to the community and police may exist,’ he said.
The February murders of Jesse Baird and Luke Davies by an off-duty policeman wouldn’t have been stopped by the register, and it’s hard to see how the new system will do anything about the growing number of unlicenced weapons in circulation, with the Australia Institute estimating there are now twice as many of these weapons in Australia than before the Port Arthur massacre.
Still, a national register is surely a step in the right direction.
Horror movie, right there on your TV (and everywhere else)
In other ultra-violence news, the American government has approved more weapons for Israel, with no strings attached, and the Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles popped up in Kyiv last week to say Australia would be providing another $100m of military support for Ukraine, on top of the billions he announced last week to keep Australia safe, presumably from our largest trading partner, China.
Elon Musk is refusing to back down on Australian government calls to remove video of a violent terrorism incident from X’s servers (and the victim Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel agrees with him), and there is a possibility that news of a traditional kind will soon disappear altogether from social media in Australia, although violence will undoubtedly remain.
In Romania, the trial of alleged human trafficker and rapist Andrew Tate inches closer, but the ripples of damage from this international influencer and others like him continue, with the normalisation of extreme violent sexism in every corner of the internet adding to long-standing cultural problems like endless rape scenes in movies, and murder as entertainment on television each night.
Sexism is at its worst when women become faceless and generic, and are no longer considered as someone’s mother, sister or daughter – individual human beings.
As the cost of living rises, and things get tougher for the majority, there is the age-old problem of men kicking those they perceive as weaker, hence the rising violence towards women, children and animals. It’s a problem bigger than governments, or maybe even cultures.
Everybody hurts, and we all have to do what we can to stop it.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning film-maker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
Long ago, he did work experience in Parliament House with Mungo MacCallum.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
