Jesuit Social Services welcomes the opportunity to contribute to South Australia’s Royal Commission into Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence. The prevalence of these distinct but overlapping forms of violence is a serious, nation-wide issue, and we affirm the need for more to be done to prevent and address this crisis, which is primarily a crisis of men’s violence against women. Policy, legislative, administrative, funding and structural responses are needed at every level of government, so we commend the South Australian government on its commitment to examining these levers in order to determine what needs to change.
We acknowledge the significant work underway at a federal level seeking to build on Australia’s current approaches to preventing, addressing and responding to violence against women and children. In addition to the contents of this submission, we draw the Commission’s attention to a paper recently developed by Jesuit Social Services in light of the Federal Government’s rapid review of evidence-based approaches to prevent gender-based violence, available on our website: Perspectives on prevention of gender-based violence: Identifying and disrupting pathways to violence.
