Three high-profile alleged murders of women in Ballarat led the Victorian Government to roll out a four-year ‘saturation model’ program for preventing family violence, a Regional MP is calling for the program to be expanded to include areas in Northern Victoria.
Liberal Member for Northern Victoria Wendy Lovell is calling on Premier Jacinta Allan to extend the recently announced family violence prevention across the regions as recent findings show that regional cities and towns face some of the highest rates of serious family violence assault offences.
Crime Statistics Agency data for 2023 shows that the 26 Local Government Areas with the highest rates of serious assault offences among family violence incidents are all rural or regional. Half of the 26 LGAs with the highest rates of serious assault in family violence are in Northern Victoria.
Greater Bendigo saw 175 serious assaults reported in 2023.
13 northern Victoria LGAs recorded a higher rate of serious assault offences than Ballarat. Greater Shepparton’s rate of 379 is more than three times that of Ballarat, which has a rate of 111 serious assaults.
Lovell says that extending the family violence prevention program to additional areas that have higher serious assault incidence rates, will enable world-leading prevention initiatives to target those areas with the worst levels of violence and the greatest need for help.
“Regional cities and towns face particular challenges in preventing family violence,” says Lovell.
“They tend to have tight-knit communities and be more geographically isolated, while there are fewer support services to help victims of violence. There are also fewer police officers to respond to crisis situations, and some stations do not have 24-hour police attendance.
“Victims of family violence in these areas cannot wait four years for the program to run in Ballarat. They need to be included in this program now.”
