The minister for women, Michaelia Cash, has denied that family violence is no longer a priority area for the government, following experts in the sector expressing disappointment about a perceived lack of federal leadership on the issue.



On Saturday the chief executive of Domestic Violence NSW, Moo Baulch, said not much had changed since the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, addressed a Council of Australian Governments summit on the issue of family violence in Brisbane a year ago. Her comments were echoed by others in the sector, including the head of Family Violence Victoria, Fiona McCormack.

But Cash told Guardian Australia that “any suggestion that domestic violence is no longer in the Coag agenda is simply incorrect”.

“The most recent Coag meeting was a special meeting specifically held to address issues surrounding national security and terrorism,” she said. “The Coalition was the first to put violence against women and their children on the Coag agenda and it remains a standing item for discussion.

“Further, in October 2016, it was the Turnbull government that held the inaugural Coag Reducing Violence Against Women Summit. In June this year, Coag agreed to hold a second summit in 2018-19 to align with the development of the fourth action plan of the national plan to reduce violence against women and their children 2010-2022.”

McCormack said while it was good to hear family violence was still on the government’s agenda, she was concerned to hear there could be more than two years between Coag summits on the issue.

“It’s difficult to understand how a summit every two years might ensure that [they] are playing close attention to an issue that sees so many Australians murdered every year,” she said.

“There is a connection between terrorism and family violence. The type of men who are likely to commit terrorist acts are also likely to be family vilence offenders, so it’s important to connect national security and family violence.

“We can tend to minimise family violence-related deaths because of a long-held culture that has tended to not see murders and violence happening in the context of family as very important.

“Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull said recently that the greatest priority is keeping Australians safe. It’s difficult to understand how anything could be more important in terms of keeping Australians safe than addressing family violence.”

The CEO of Domestic Violence NSW, Moo Baulch, said she wanted to see another Coag meeting announced “urgently”.

“If we are going to treat this with the urgency both high level politicians and communities are calling for, then we need another Coag meeting with the same kind of participation as we saw in 2016,” she said.

“This is a shifting space and we are learning more all the time about works to address it, and all while seeing a horrific number of women still coming through the system.”

Her comments come following a number of horrific family and domestic violence attacks in recent weeks.

June Oh Seo is facing domestic violence-related charges after his 34-year-old girlfriend Hee Kyung Choi was found dead in an alleyway below his balcony in Chatswood, northern Sydney. In Campsie, also in Sydney, Qing Ming Song was charged with the attempted murder of his partner after he allegedly attacked her with a hammer and a carving knife in an attack police said left her “unrecognisable”.

In western Sydney, a 30-year-old woman was found dead with a stab wound to her torso last month, and police subsequently charged a man with murder and with contravening an apprehended domestic violence order. And also last month, an 87-year-old man was killed with a hammer and a knife in his home in Liverpool, New South Wales. His son was later charged with murder.

