Cr Karen Hockley

I did have my Mitcham Community News article written and ready to go but that was before I listened to the news. It was reported that, over the weekend, there were four (yes four) separate incidents of alleged family violence and four people have lost their lives.

What a tragedy.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports that 20% of adults have experienced family violence since the age of 15 years and 19% have experienced emotional abuse from a partner. Family and domestic violence affects all socio-economic and demographic groups and mostly affects women and children. It impacts the individuals involved, their families and their communities. The effects can be intergenerational.

Government statistics[1] suggest that deaths caused by family and domestic violence are reducing over time. And so they should be!

You might ask what this has to do with Council and the traditional response is nothing. It’s not one of the celebrated three ‘R’s (roads, rates and rubbish), and it doesn’t fit neatly into any of the services that people usually associate with local government. However, preventing family and domestic violence is everyone’s responsibility.

Showing and having respect for others and particularly for women, is an important start. This includes closing the gender pay gap and staffing Council in a way that reflects our community. These aspects are in the hands of the Mitcham CEO and I have observed steady progress in this area during my time at Mitcham.

The make-up of the Elected Member body of Mitcham Council is in your hands.  You have given us a good gender balance over recent election cycles, but we could improve our diversity in other ways to include a better age and cultural balance.

We continue to work on creating community connections and strengthening community capacity. We do this by staffing community centres and libraries so that they can deliver programs that are attractive to a diversity of our residents.

Having our community centres open means that we can welcome people outside of our formal program schedule and this creates opportunities for community members to connect with others in a way that is suitable and manageable.

Aside from role modelling healthy relationships within my family, being respectful to others and supporting Council’s community building efforts, I’m keen to understand what else I can do. I stand with those who have experienced or are currently experiencing domestic and family violence and I wish that this sort of crime would stop.

[1] https://www.aihw.gov.au/family-domestic-and-sexual-violence/resources/fdsv-summary

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