‘We are talking about … human hurt of such intensity it’s impossible to imagine,’ former governor general says in interview discussing her role leading a Queensland taskforce

This article is more than 5 years old

Quentin Bryce says it is up to men to confront domestic violence

This article is more than 5 years old

Dame Quentin Bryce says four decades of “courageous” social work led by women has not made headway against Australia’s domestic violence problem, suggesting the key drivers of change should be men and police.



The former governor general, who is leading a Queensland government taskforce on family violence, has spoken of affecting encounters with women who had suffered at their partners’ hands early in her public service career.

In an interview with Guardian Australia, Bryce said violence against women was “the most serious human rights issue in the world” and that cultural change in men was “the heart of the issue”.

“It’s been seen as a women’s issue because it’s been women who have set up the refuges, provided the services, supported women and their children,” she said.

“But across 40 years of that hard work and commitment and professional skill, we have seen no amelioration of domestic violence.

“Thank God for what they do and I have the greatest admiration for those people – but the fact is the incidence and the gravity of it is getting more serious.

“We are talking about stabbing, strangulation, grievous bodily harm, tragedy, death – human hurt of such intensity it’s impossible to imagine.”

Men largely did not want to confront even their own health issues, let alone the “harrowing” topic of domestic violence among their peers, Bryce said.

The point had been driven home, Bryce said, when a prominent sportsmen was asked at a White Ribbon Day breakfast in Brisbane last week whether he discussed the issue with friends.

“He said, ‘No, we don’t talk about anything really, do we?’ Boys have to be brought up to talk about those things, to do the storytelling,” Bryce said.

“We have to keep talking about these things, writing about them, staring in the face the fact that every week in this country a woman is killed by her partner or ex-partner.”

She said change called for “leadership, advocacy and courage”. She saw to it that the taskforce published first-hand accounts of domestic violence before its final report in February.

Her own experiences meeting women who had been attacked by their partners while she was running the Queensland Women’s Information Service in the 1980s were “truly etched on my heart”, she said.

She recalled one encounter with a woman who came into her empty office late on a Friday afternoon, her purpose not immediately clear. “We were just talking, she was what I might call an average Aussie woman, the two of us there together across my desk,” Bryce said.

“I offered her a cup of tea and I happened to say to her, ‘Oh what a dreadful bruise’ – on her arm.

“She just suddenly said, ‘That’s nothing.’ She took off her white shirt – I remember she had a petticoat on with a lace edge – and she was literally black and blue.

“That happened to her every Friday. I think that she knew that the next time it happened, she might be dead.”

Bryce took her to an emergency shelter. “I knew this was very serious and she was counting on me and she was desperate for help. I’ve never forgotten it,” she said.

The former governor general said the taskforce had identified key issues for the police service, which shouldered the “enormous burden” of answering 175 domestic violence complaints a day in Queensland.

Victim accounts given to a government inquiry into strengthening the state’s domestic violence laws in August said police responses to their complaints improved once officers had themselves been threatened by the abusers.

She has been meeting with the police commissioner, Ian Stewart, and police officers in regional and remote areas of Queensland, where family violence is sometimes more concentrated.

Bryce told a Queensland University of Technology business leader’s forum on Friday that the corporate world also has a role to play. In places like Gladstone, a hub for fly-in fly-out miners, domestic violence complaints were 97% higher than the state average, she said.

The taskforce is examining issues ranging from laws governing domestic violence orders to the effects of violence on children and even the language used when discussing the issue – including whether the term domestic violence is too benign.