Family and Domestic Violence

The majority of people who experience these forms of violence are women, and another cause in Be The Change - gender inequality - is considered to be an underlying driver of FDV, along with child abuse, mental health, poverty and disadvantage, racism and discrimination, violent pornography and drug and alcohol abuse. In turn, FDV directly impacts other causes – homelessness, poverty and disadvantage, mental health and child abuse. 

Furthermore, with so many children witnessing FDV, ‘exposure to violence and abuse in childhood and adolescence is a risk-factor for developing anti-feminist attitudes and for perpetuating violence’.  In this way, FDV is normalised behaviour that is transmitted from one generation to the next.

Australia is a signatory to the 1993 UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women which covers physical, sexual and psychological violence, as well as violence both at home and elsewhere in society.  It defines violence against women as ‘any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.’  According to the Declaration, violence against women is rooted in the historically unequal power relations between women and men, and emphasises that violence against women is ‘one of the crucial social mechanisms by which women are forced into a subordinate position compared with men’.

Most female homicide victims have suffered a history of abuse. Between 1 July 2010 and 30 June 2018, over 3 in 4 cases involved a male killing a current or former female partner, with the vast majority of those male offenders identified as primary abusers of the woman they killed.

Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) lists ten ‘lethality/high risk factors’ in its national risk assessment principles: a history of family violence, actual or pending separation, sexual violence, non-lethal strangulation/choking, stalking, threats to kill, access to and use of weapons, escalation in frequency and/or severity, coercive control, and pregnancy and new birth.

Of the 212 male primary domestic violence abusers who killed their current or former female partner:

• 82 per cent exhibited emotionally and psychologically abusive behaviours against the female partners they killed – behaviours employed to frighten, belittle, humiliate, unsettle and undermine the victim’s sense of self-worth.

• 63 per cent had perpetrated social abuse, which involves isolating the victim from support networks and controlling her movements.

• 42 per cent had stalked the woman they killed.

• 27 per cent used economically or financially abusive tactics to diminish the victim’s ability to support themselves and force them to depend on the abuser financially.

With forty per cent of cases involving persistent and disorderly offenders, whose violence was highly visible across police, child protection and health services, but police practices varying across States and Territories, there are calls for more consistent policing. 

Historically, FDV was understood as physical and/or sexual violence, with a focus on single or episodic acts of violence. It is now seen to cover a wider range of behaviours and harms, including emotional abuse, harassment, stalking and controlling behaviours, with coercive control, used by a third of perpetrators, now understood as a commonly occurring foundation for family and domestic violence.

Occurring repeatedly, subtly and sometimes over a long period of time, coercive control is a pattern of abusive and manipulative behaviours used by one person to dominate another and can involve: intimidation (frighten a person with threats); monitoring (watch, check in with, or keep a record of someone’s movements and activities); regulating (control someone with rules or standards); isolating (keep someone apart from their family and friends); humiliating (make someone feel ashamed, embarrassed or small); manipulating (make a plan to control someone to get something the perpetrator wants); punishing (treat someone badly or cause them pain or suffering because they have acted a certain way, or broken a rule the perpetrator made); and frightening (stop someone from doing something by making them afraid).

Analysis undertaken by the NSW Domestic Violence Death Review Team identified that, among 112 incidents of intimate partner homicide that occurred between June 2000 and July 2019, coercive controlling behaviour was a feature of the relationship between couples involved in all but one case.

In a 2021 study of 1,023 Australian women who had recently experienced coercive control by their current or former partner, the most frequently reported behaviours were jealousy and suspicion of friends, constant insults, monitoring of movements and financial abuse. Over half of the respondents also reported experiencing physical forms of abuse, including severe forms such as non-fatal strangulation. Nearly one in three of these women also reported experiencing sexual violence during the survey period.

Awareness of coercive control has increased significantly in Australia with regular harrowing media reports, such as the murder of Hannah Clarke and her three children in February 2020 by her former partner. Her former partner had attempted to regulate every aspect of her life, including what she wore and ate, her access to medical care and her social media accounts, and had been stalking her online.

In most Australian States and Territories, FDV has not been an offence in itself. Rather, FDV is recorded using existing criminal offences, such as assault, indecent assault, rape, sexual assault, attempted murder, stalking or intent to do grievous bodily harm. 

Criminalising coercive control would involve moving from an incident-based approach to an approach that criminalises ongoing abusive behaviour. Due to the considerable advocacy of victims, such as by Rosie Batty AO after tragic murder of her son, Luke, by her former partner, all State governments now have, or are planning to pass, legislation to create a new criminal offence for coercive control.  

In October 2022, the Australian, State and Territory governments released the second National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022–2032 as the overarching national policy framework that addresses the social, cultural, political and economic factors that drive gendered violence to end violence against women and children, after the first Plan failed to achieve a significant and sustained reduction in violence by 2022.  Despite governmental commitment to this Plan, in August 2024, the first yearly report pointed out that ‘frontline and crisis services need to be better and more sustainably resourced’ and that the ‘Department of Social Services should also design funding models that provide more certainty through longer funding periods.’ The report also highlighted the need ‘to offer more support options for men who are concerned about their behaviour and increase the capacity of related service sectors to respond to men’s needs’.

The National Plan and Our Watch’s Change the Story recognise that the challenge is to tackle gender inequality, discrimination and entrenched social norms across the four levels of 1) individual and relationship (individual knowledge, attitudes, behaviours, beliefs as well as the influences from a person’s closest social circle – peers, partner and family members); 2) organisation and community; 3) systems, institutions; and 4) societal.

After angry Australians demonstrated across the country over the ongoing killing of women by their partners, Prime Minister Albanese declared that Australia faced a ‘national crisis’ of violence against women. National Cabinet met and, after a Rapid Review of Prevention Approaches with an expert group, substantial reforms were announced, including a review of how alcohol laws affect FDV victims, with an additional $800m in Commonwealth government funding. 

In the meantime, some communities are taking control.

In April 2024, people in Ballarat flooded the streets in a powerful protest for change following the disappearance and alleged murder of 51-year-old Samantha Murphy, the death of mother Rebecca Young in a suspected murder-suicide by her partner, and the murder of Hannah McGuire by her ex-boyfriend. Their deaths sent shock waves through the whole community and galvanised the city to call for action on gendered violence. People of all ages marched together to express grief, outrage, and disbelief. Many held the grief of other historic tragedies and injustices as they marched, with ribbons tied to the fences of institutions close by.  

In the weeks after, the principals of three of the regional Victorian city’s high schools brought their students together for a joint forum.  Young women said they avoided going for a run at night. Others spoke of fear becoming part of their daily life. Young men spoke about their desire to be more vulnerable and the constraints of traditional gender roles. All of them said they wanted things to change.

With a relative who experienced family violence, Stephan Fields, the principal of Ballarat High School, spent the next year co-designing a response. He found that although young people often receive the right messages in the classroom, they were undermined by the attitudes and behaviours they encounter elsewhere – including at home, in sports clubs and among their peers.  Sport, in particular, stood out as ‘woven into the culture of Ballarat’, with high participation among children under 14 and adults in their 30s. But despite efforts to promote inclusion, ‘misogyny, homophobia and excusing of violence on and off the field’ remains prevalent.

In September 2025, the co-design process led to the launch of the Victorian government backed Respect Ballarat – an Australian-first trial of a saturation model to prevent gender-based violence, involving flooding the community with multiple programs, campaigns, education and support services to shift the attitudes and behaviours that drive violence. In the initial stages, efforts will focus on workplaces, community sports clubs, schools, and early childhood, prenatal, and neonatal settings.