The Commonwealth Parliament recently launched- yet another- inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violence. The second one this year and yet another inquiry into the issue, one of many in the last five years.

I heard someone say that Australia’s love, fetish, of holding public inquiries to solve social problems is just our antipodean version of the US’s litigation-fixes-everything culture. True or not, family and domestic violence inquiries have had their time in the sun and they all seem to arrive at the same answer: the problems are due to entrenched sexism and the government is not using enough public funding to address family violence.

Here is a god submission by the good people at the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services, which arrives at the same conclusions but also highlights that the ongoing effects of colonisation have also contributed to family and domestic violence in Indigenous communities.

Read the submission in full, here.