PRIME MINISTER:
Thank you for the commitment of the men and women who work in the building and in the surrounds to this absolutely critical national cause. Our leaders and deputy leaders of our parties are represented, the Speaker is here, all of my parliamentary colleagues I want to acknowledge and welcome.
The Chief of the Defence Force and many other of our Defence leaders are here too, as you said.
Let there be no doubt, what we need in Australia today, is significant cultural change.
Violence against women is the end point of disrespecting women.
Now, not all disrespect of women ends up in violence but all violence against women begins there.
So, one of the most critical things all of us can do, and I am channelling my wife Lucy who is the first person I heard to make this point so emphatically in a public place, but one of the most important things we must do as parents and indeed as grandparents is to ensure that our sons and our grandsons respect their sisters and mothers and their grandmothers.
In other words, if we set the cultural environment right at the outset, men respecting women, when they are little boys, and that is the example we give them, they will respect them through the rest of their lives. This is such an important, such an important objective.
And, I'm so thrilled to see in so many schools, White Ribbon programs are under way so that we're getting, you know, kids and in this context little boys and making sure that they respect the girls, the women in their lives.
And so every husband, every man that respects his wife, his partner, sets an example for the young males in their lives. That is absolutely critically important. We can genuinely change the culture.
Now, later today we will be releasing some research which tells us, as a sobering reminder, of what Australians actually think, or many Australians think about violence against women. It is a big wake up call for the need for real change. Even the term domestic violence, which I know is sort of in the lexicon, it's hard to extirpate now, even that is a problem, because it creates the impression that somehow or other, domestic violence is less significant than violence in the street.
But violence against women is a crime. It doesn't matter what the environment in which it occurs is. It is a crime and has to be treated as such.
But on this day, I want to pay a special tribute to the victims of domestic violence, past and present, who have borne the burden of our failure to act for too long. To every child who has lost a mother, every mother who has lost a child, for the lost daughters, sisters, aunts and friends, and for those who are suffering right now, this is your day too.
It's the day we talk about your courage, your pain, your sacrifice, and it's the day that we recommit, as Ken said, as men to ending domestic violence, to ending violence against women.
Yesterday we met with Dr Ann O'Neill, a truly inspirational survivor of domestic violence. She told us how her husband, estranged husband, broke into her home, shooting her and killing her two children, before turning the gun on himself. Ann was the only survivor.
And she told us that the most common question she was asked after this horrendous tragedy was, what did you do to make him do that?
The grief that that caused, her tragedy is a frightening reminder that too often we blame the victims and excuse the men and minimise the severity of the violence.
So yesterday we had another meeting with the media and there is a real cultural change which is very important - to make sure that they report violence against women, stories about violence against women, domestic violence in a way that does not blame the victims, in a way that promotes cultural change.
Now, the Government is, and I think all parties here, all Members and Senators here are totally committed to this cultural change, I know that.
One of the first actions of my government was to announce the funding of $100 million for a women's safety package and Ken referred to that earlier, to address the immediate needs of women who fear for their lives.
I would note, with respect to Tony Warren and our sponsor Telstra, that part of that was to support the provision of smart phones and the digital technology to enable women to be safe and to seek help.
So the answer lies within all of us men to make this change. We have to lead by example and the most important place to lead by example is with our children and our grandchildren. I cannot emphasise the importance of that too much.
If little boys see their fathers disrespecting their mothers, they will grow up to disrespect their partners. If they see their mothers respected, they will respect their sisters.
All of us as men, as fathers and grandfathers, as leaders, as teachers, as commanders in the armed forces, as secretaries in the public service, as members of parliament, all of us men are role models and all of us, in our own way, can effect and must effect this cultural change.
As I said, the critical insight into this is that not all disrespect of women ends up in violence against women, but that is where all violence against women begins.
And so at the root of this is respect for women. Teaching our children, all of us, respect is absolutely critical. And of course it goes right across the way our society prospers, the glue that holds this, the most successful multicultural society in the world together. The thing that makes us harmonious is mutual respect - absolutely critical.
So that's what we need to practice, we need to practice that as an example in our public lives and in our private lives alike.
So here on White Ribbon Day, we recommit to end violence against women, to support the victims of violence, but above all to work together to effect this critical cultural change for the protection of the women of Australia and of all of us.
Thank you very much.