Thursday, 18 March 2021

March 4 Justice

Mr FOWLES (Burwood) (09:44): I rise to reflect on the March 4 Justice march and rally held on Monday of this week in Melbourne and right across the nation. Can I first acknowledge how difficult it has been for victim-survivors over the past few weeks. I understand that it is never easy, that the battle to overcome past trauma is continuous and the fight against discrimination and gendered violence can be overwhelming. We are clearly now in the middle of a great social reckoning, and it is long overdue.

As I joined my parliamentary colleagues on the steps of Parliament on Monday and watched the thousands of women and allies gather, I was overcome with a clarity of purpose. As men we must do better. We must educate ourselves, our peers, our sons and our grandsons, educate them on respect, on consent, on tolerance and on awareness, because our society is not doing it for us. It is riddled with systemic violence against women. I have three sons, three young men who are growing up in a country where on average one woman a week is killed by her intimate male partner. I have a responsibility to raise my sons to be good men, to be men who treat women with respect and do so without needing to think of their younger sister or mother in order to see women as worthy and as equal.

Now, I have been far from perfect on this. Too often I have walked past poor behaviour, and as we know, the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. I had two goals on Monday: to show up and to listen. I have got a new goal now: to call out toxic masculinity whenever and wherever I see it or hear it, whether it is on Twitter, on the floor of this chamber or in the community. I commend the goals of the March 4 Justice to this place.