By Lewis Jackson
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia will spend almost A$1 billion on payments to those fleeing domestic violence and introduce new measures to police pornography and internet violence in response to what the government calls a “national crisis” of gender violence.
Thousands of people took to the streets on Saturday to protest violence against women, which the government says has killed one woman every four days this year. Five women were killed during a mass stabbing in April, the same month that a high-profile defamation case concluded that a rape had taken place in parliament.
Speaking after an emergency meeting of state and federal leaders to address the issue, Prime Minister Antonio Albanês announced A$925.2 million ($600 million) to make permanent a financial support program for those escaping domestic violence.
“Today is about who we are as a nation and as a society,” he said. “This is an issue for all of society, not just governments. It’s an issue for civil society, it’s an issue for the media, it’s an issue for all of us.”
Australia will also introduce legislation to ban the non-consensual creation and distribution of deepfake pornography, where people digitally alter pornographic images to look like other people.
Thirty-four women were killed by an intimate partner in Australia in the year ending June 30, a 28% increase on the previous year, despite just a 4% increase in global homicides.
Attacking the views of “toxic male extremists” online, Albanese also announced a series of measures to police internet pornography and promote healthier attitudes towards women.
The AA$6.5 million pilot will test ways to stop children accessing inappropriate content online and the results will inform new rules for internet companies being developed by the online safety regulator.
But in a sign of how difficult implementation will be, the e-Security Commissioner is already involved in a legal battle to get social media platform X to remove posts showing an Australian bishop being stabbed during a sermon. Owner Elon Musk has vowed to fight the measure, which he called censorship.
Albanese said his government did not underestimate how difficult policing content on the Internet would be, but “online gamers need to understand exactly what the consequences of a free-for-all online service are.”
($1 = 1.5456 Australian dollars)
(Reporting by Lewis Jackson; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
