NSW Premier John Fahey has noticed a social problem: given the option, many women and children would rather live in emergency shelters than stay at home with their family. Last week, however, he came up with a solution — remove the refuge option, and offer a monetary reward to husbands and fathers who manage to keep their wives and offspring home.
The gathering of National Party faithful in Orange to whom this stroke of genius was announced gave thunderous applause for Fahey's blank revelation of utter social conservatism. Of course, it was for these "family men" that Fahey and his speechwriter had cooked up such a good ol' fashioned recipe. They have been appalled to find that it didn't go down nearly so well in the city, even with a liberal garnish of equivocation.
In Orange and Dubbo Premier Fahey's line was clear: "We encourage people to leave the family by simply providing money in the welfare area with refuges, with hostels, departmental officers and counselling and everything else", he said. "We have supported children in leaving home; we've endeavoured to set up the bias to encourage them, almost, to do it... Now I want to go back to that traditional family and see a lot more support happening, instead of encouraging people to walk away from the responsibilities and therefore walk away from that unit that the family has always stood for."
By the time he got back to Sydney the damage control team had whipped out a press release, softening the approach to "...concern... to see that state welfare authorities gave priority to reconciliation, rather than artificially widening the gap between a child and their parents" and acknowledging the need for crisis accommodation "...in some circumstances".
Women's and welfare groups have been quick to point out the facts about the vastly understated "...some circumstances".
Domestic violence is the single most common reason for police callouts in NSW. There were over 30,000 police callouts to incidents of domestic violence in NSW in 1991.
Women's refuges currently provide for less than 30% of the expressed demand for crisis accommodation for women who are the victims and survivors of domestic violence.
Similarly, the vast majority of homeless youth have been physically or psychologically abused by their family, usually their father or a father-figure, and youth refuges are unable to cope with the demand for accommodation for abused and homeless young people.
So much for the "alternate lifestylers" of Fahey's venomous rhetoric.
There is too much information readily available today for it bursts like Fahey's are made out of ignorance of the facts. Fahey, like anyone who reads the odd newspaper, must be presumed to have at least some knowledge of the nature and extent of violence that occurs in so many family homes. Despite this knowledge he, and his cohorts in Orange, Dubbo, and conservative governments around the world, wish to maintain the structure that keeps women in their place by all means necessary.
Who, besides those with a vested interest in keeping us home, would believe that it is the existence of overcrowded, underfunded, poorly equipped shelters, and not the perpetration of violence, that drives abused women and children their homes in the first place?
At the most fundamental level, Fahey's suggested solution to the dissolution of the traditional family is an acknowledgement that, given the choice, many would not choose a traditional family unit. It admits that something more is needed than free choice, such as tax incentives or the complete removal of any other option, to keep us "home".
By Karen Fredericks