Wednesday, 8 March 2023

 Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (17:40): I rise to take note of the fourth annual report from the family violence multi-agency risk assessment and management framework, tabled on 23 February. The report outlines activities by Victorian government departments, sector peaks and individual organisations to align their policies, practice guidance and procedures with the family violence multi-agency risk assessment and management framework, fortunately known by many as MARAM. MARAM is a foundational and critical element of family violence reform and was one of the key recommendations from the 2016 Royal Commission into Family Violence – a royal commission promised by Labor, established by Labor and whose recommendations have been fully implemented by this Labor government.

The MARAM framework enables consistent and collaborative service responses to family violence by better understanding and consistently applying risk assessment to incidents of family violence. The MARAM framework operates to better protect victim-survivors and works alongside two complementary reforms, the family violence information sharing and the child information sharing schemes. As the royal commission noted, all parts of the service system have an important role in identifying and knowing how to respond to family violence, because many victims do not seek support from police or family violence services, and equipping health and other universal service systems to identify family violence risk and provide support to victims and their children is essential. Redeveloped with the aim of addressing the gaps identified by the commission, MARAM establishes the system architecture required to have a systemwide approach and shared responsibility for family violence risk assessment. That framework has been central to services that meet individuals and families experiencing violence and covers all aspects of service delivery.

These fundamental functions of the framework have served to establish a systemwide shared understanding of family violence and family violence risk and have provided services with essential information and resources so that professionals on the front line can keep victim-survivors safe and keep perpetrators in view and hold them accountable for their actions. The royal commission identified that the sharing of information between services was essential for keeping victim-survivors safe, and I am pleased there has been so much progress on this foundational aspect of family violence reform in the nearly seven years since the royal commission’s report was released.

Following the report of the royal commission, the Andrews Labor government announced a 10-year reform plan to rebuild Victoria’s family violence system. Six years later the Minister for Prevention of Family Violence has announced that the government has implemented all 227 recommendations of the royal commission. I want to acknowledge the hard work under the leadership of the various ministers – obviously the late Fiona Richardson, Gabrielle Williams and now Ros Spence. The government as a whole has invested more than $3.7 billion to prevent and respond to family violence, more than any other state.

I care about this a lot. Prior to entering this place I was proud to serve as a member of the executive team in the Department of Premier and Cabinet’s family violence reform unit, with lead responsibility for the information-sharing reforms – reforms that arose not only in the context of the royal commission but as a key recommendation from the coronial inquest into the death of Luke Batty. I would also like to pay tribute to Rosie Batty, who I had the privilege of working with when she was the inaugural chair of the Victim Survivors Advisory Council and who we consulted extensively with on the information-sharing legislation which is being used to support the MARAM framework. I would also like to pay tribute to the tireless public servants that I worked alongside on those reforms and who have continued the implementation journey in more recent years, as well as the service organisations and peak groups who have worked hard to deliver these reforms on the ground. Reforms like MARAM may never make the headlines when they are done or done well, but as the royal commission noted, our foundational reforms required us to deliver a better system response to addressing family violence.

In making this contribution today, on International Women’s Day, I want to make the point that while family and domestic violence is everyone’s problem, it begins and ends with men. We must support greater gender equality, not just with words today but with actions each and every day to address the structural causes of gender inequality and the gendered nature of family violence. We will not be able to end family violence until we end gender inequality.