Politics With Michelle Grattan

As election year opens, Michelle Grattan speaks with Tanya Plibersek, Labor’s spokeswoman on education and women, about the opposition’s agenda in these two critical areas. Violence against women is one of our society’s most pressing and intractable issues, and front and centre for Plibersek, who says there is a way to do better. “We do know so much about what we can do to reduce risks of violence in interpersonal relationships. And of course, it starts with our youngest Australians,” she says. We “need to rely much more on parents to model healthy relationships in the home.” “It disturbs me that the rates … of domestic violence don’t seem to be coming down and in fact, one of the few areas of crime where statistics continue to go up are areas like sexual assault. So we need to do better at prevention. We need to do better at policing and in our justice system.” Despite these negatives, Plibersek sees last year’s March4Justice and increased public and media awareness as signs “things are changing, that our so