When Chief Justice Will Alstergren speaks at events focusing on family violence, all he sees in the audience are women.
“You go to so many functions where people are talking about domestic and family violence,” he said.
“When you do look, how many men are actually in the audience?”
The Chief Justice of the Federal Circuit and Family Court has called family violence “a national disgrace” and said it shouldn’t be seen as a women’s problem to fix.
“This is not a women's issue. It's an all of society issue. It's a men's issue,” he said.
“People like Rosie Batty, and other people in this area have done such an amazing job over the last 10,15, 20 years in this space, they've given everything to try and really get this message out,” he said.
“It's not a matter of shaming, or blaming people, but the difficulty is many men aren't talking about it.”
Courts initiate meeting with family violence prevention sector
On Friday, the Federal Circuit and Family Court brought together 80 people working in the justice system, support services, academia and advocates for an all-day symposium in Melbourne on violence against women.
It’s the first time the courts have held such a forum.
The director of family violence and Indigenous programs at the court, Hayley Foster, said there had been fundamental changes made to the way the court works to protect families in the context of family violence, but there is much more to be done.
“We're not finished, we want to keep striving ever higher, because we do have a national crisis in this country,” she said.
The symposium was months in the making, but the timing could not have been more relevant, after a horror start to 2024 which has seen dozens of women losing their lives to violence.
The Ballarat community in central Victoria is mourning the deaths of three women in the past three months — two of those allegedly at the hands of their partners.
And the New South Wales Police Commissioner Karen Webb has said the five women who died in a stabbing attack at a Bondi Junction shopping centre last weekend were targeted for their gender.
Chief Justice calls for courts to innovate
Chief Justice Alstergren said family courts needed to be more responsive, to try and ensure violence doesn’t occur in the first place and prevent lasting damage to survivors, including children, many of whom never recover.
“We're doing everything we can once it happens, but probably not enough has been done before it happens,” he said.
“And that's where the real challenge is, in all this.”
“The days of courts simply being creatures of precedent have gone, we have to be a lot more innovative.”
He said it was important to hear from people working with those affected, to find solutions and common themes.
“The people on the frontline will see a lot more and have a better understanding of it than lawyers will, for instance,” he said
Tarang Chawala has had devastating first-hand experience.
In 2015, his 23-year-old sister Niki was murdered by her partner, who Tarang has described as “vengeful and controlling”.
He believes the warning signs before her death were ignored.
“Around three months before my sister was murdered by her partner, she called triple-0 because he was brandishing a knife at home.
“And nothing happened. And I just wonder, what if something had been done?”
Women cannot solve violence against women
Much of the Melbourne meeting on Friday was closed to the media.
But in his keynote address federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus called for men to “step up” and end the crisis of male violence in Australia.
"It is a scourge in our society and it must end,” Mr Dreyfus said.
“Women cannot be expected to solve violence against women alone,” he said.
The Chief Justice agreed.
“We should, as men, be calling this kind of behaviour out.
“We shouldn't be doing it, and we shouldn't put up with it."
Mr Chawala said the human cost behind statistics should never be forgotten.
“Whenever I look ahead to anniversaries, birthdays, Christmases, there's always an empty seat at that table,” he said.
“And we set up a place setting for my sister, Niki. And there's so many families that do that.”
He said men have a responsibility to pull up their mates on sexist attitudes and behaviours like “locker room banter”.
“The complex risk factors for men who use violence are just that — complex. But there is a responsibility on all men to stand up and challenge those sorts of attitudes,” he said.
Victoria’s Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes told the ABC, there needed to be changes to the way some men value women.
“There are a lot of good blokes out there, but there are a certain cohort that are not and they view women second to them,” Ms Symes said.
“We want to make sure that our young men are having the right education, the right support, to be the men they should be.”
“We want women not to have to second guess whether they should go and walk the dog at night."