Bill Shorten calls for Tony Abbott to hold national crisis summit to tackle violence against women

Updated

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten is urging the Prime Minister to hold a national summit to tackle the "epidemic" of violence against women.

Mr Shorten vowed to act on the issue during his campaign to become Labor leader following the 2013 election.

He said a summit was required to get Commonwealth, state and territory governments to work together and develop a national plan.

It was his second policy proposal in a week.

"One in three Australian women have experienced physical violence since the age of 15," Mr Shorten said in a statement.

"We must put domestic violence at the centre of national political debate in order to change these chilling statistics."

Mr Shorten also proposed more than $70 million in interim measures to help victims of family violence if Labor won the next election.

Funding of $50 million would go towards making sure women had better access to legal services, and $15 million would be allocated to grants to allow women to safely remain in their homes.

A further $8 million would be spent on perpetrator mapping, a process which allowed police, the courts, family violence groups and child protection organisations to better share information and prevent family violence occurring.

Labor said its plan was devised by pulling together advice from academics and advocates, including Australian of the Year Rosie Batty, who recently told ABC's Q&A program the process in reporting abuse had to change.

"There is no clearer symbol of continuing gender inequality in our society than the epidemic of violence against women," Mr Shorten said.

"Too many victims of family violence endure a postcode lottery. If you are a woman at risk, where you live should not determine the quality of support you receive.

"The nightmare of family violence is a reality for far too many Australian women. No-one should have to face this ordeal on their own."

PM advocates action through state coordination

Prime Minister Tony Abbott said he believed developing a plan through the COAG process was the best way forward.

"In the end, if we are going to tackle domestic violence with more vigour and rigour, the states need to be our intimate partners and therefore the best way to handle this is through COAG," Mr Abbott told AM.

"I have appointed Rosie Batty, the Australian of the Year, and [former Victorian Police chief commissioner] Ken Lay to a special task group who will work with us as part of that COAG process.

"What we want to see is a national domestic violence order scheme so that if an order is taken out in Darwin and you move to Melbourne, maybe to get away from a difficult situation, your persecutor is equally bound by the domestic violence order in Melbourne as in Darwin.

"We need to also have a uniform national set of procedures around this, the way police handle these matters, and we also need to have a much stronger approach to online violence because there is a lot of online persecution and harassment these days."

Topics: domestic-violence, community-and-society, federal-government, government-and-politics, bill-shorten, abbott-tony, australia

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