{"id":804391,"date":"2026-07-16T17:34:32","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T17:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/804391\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T17:34:32","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T17:34:32","slug":"two-women-and-two-girls-dead-in-four-days-australian-experts-yet-again-call-for-action-australia-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/804391\/","title":{"rendered":"Two women and two girls dead in four days. Australian experts yet again call for action | Australia news"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, two women and two girls were allegedly murdered in four days. The deaths of Lavanya Chappa, Jana Armstrong<\/a>, Layla Jeffery<\/a>, 13, and a 17-year-old Yolngu girl, have been called another crisis point for domestic and family violence.<\/p>\n

It has been eight weeks since the last national crisis point: the alleged murder of a woman and two children at a Sydney home<\/a>. Before that it was the January killings of Sophie Quinn<\/a>, her unborn baby, Nerida Quinn and John Harris. Every time, there is the same familiar hand-wringing, and often calls for a royal commission<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we don\u2019t have a knowledge gap,\u201d says Katherine Berney, a policy expert on gender-based violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe already have more than 1,000 recommendations. The knowledge gap isn\u2019t there. There\u2019s an implementation gap.\u201d<\/p>\n

Seventeen years ago, the national council to reduce violence against women and their children titled their landmark blueprint for reform: \u201ctime for action\u201d.<\/p>\n

Experts and those working to prevent violence against women describe their frustration at the apparent cycle of outrage and fatigue, often fuelled by the latest tragedy, then prolonged by the inability of governments to implement lasting and effective, though costly, reforms.<\/p>\n

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Most Australian states have a \u201cdeath review\u201d system, with the primary purpose of analysing cases, identifying systemic problems, and making recommendations that might prevent future deaths.<\/p>\n

In 2024, researchers went back over the recommendations of the two longest-running state death reviews, in Queensland and New South Wales<\/a>. They concluded that only 16% of recommendations, over more than a decade, had been properly enacted by governments and agencies.<\/p>\n

Dr Emma Buxton-Namisnyk, a co-author of the study and a senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales, questions whether government responses to tragedies are \u201cperformative\u201d, in that they are about managing a spike in public concern rather than effecting real change.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does worry me that there is a level of performativity in being seen to [be] taking these deaths seriously \u2026 but then defenestrating them by not actually implementing recommendations,\u201d Buxton-Namisnyk says.<\/p>\n

\u201cGovernments like populist announcements. What is often missing is that really sustained investment out of the public purse, and that\u2019s not a great announceable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Governments struggle with the complexity of domestic and family violence, she says. \u201cIt\u2019s highly relational. The victim and the offender don\u2019t behave in ways that are the same as a victim of crime and an offender where there\u2019s no relationship. There\u2019s a simpler, more carceral narrative that you can spin when it comes to other types of crime.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe thing that I always think about is: why aren\u2019t we upset right now? Why were we so upset two years ago compared to now when we\u2019re seeing the same things? It can be overwhelming engaging in the news cycle when it\u2019s so horrific.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018We\u2019ve got to listen to dead women\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one knows what to do or say, because it\u2019s so horrific,\u201d Berney says.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it\u2019s dramatised people can lean into the horror and the urgency. But when we are confronted with allegations like this in real life there\u2019s almost silence from our senior cabinet leaders and first ministers.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In Queensland, the alleged domestic violence murder of Toowoomba woman Jana Armstrong comes after state cut tens of millions in funding and resources<\/a> from its domestic violence response.<\/p>\n

Queensland police have scrapped a specialist domestic and family violence command and decided that domestic violence case management is not \u201ccore business\u201d. Key recommendations from an inquiry into police responses to violence against women have not been enacted, and public reporting about progress has stopped.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, Margaret McMurdo, a retired judge who chaired a state taskforce on women\u2019s safety, told the Brisbane Times<\/a> the government \u201cseems to have abandoned\u201d critical parts of the taskforce\u2019s recommendations.<\/p>\n

\u201cMeanwhile, our mothers, daughters, sisters and granddaughters continue to die from this continuing scourge of domestic and family violence,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Guardian Australia revealed last year<\/a> that the Queensland domestic and family violence \u201cdeath review\u201d advisory board had quietly stopped reviewing all cases, to the concern of several former members. One of those, Betty Taylor, said the review had stopped centring women\u2019s experiences.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to listen to dead women,\u201d Taylor said.<\/p>\n

Berney says all states and territories have signed on to a national plan, but that commitments to act have not been met. She says there is nationally inconsistent reporting of data about violence against women, no government-backed database tracking homicides or other statistics, and no ongoing monitoring of national progress.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople like linear solutions,\u201d Berney says. \u201cBut social problems don\u2019t have linear solutions, particularly when there\u2019s a lack of will for funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t keep saying the same things. It\u2019s utterly, utterly horrific, the two women and two girls who were [allegedly] murdered. It\u2019s horrific for their families, for their communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if we only ever do crisis response, we only ever get crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Australia, domestic and family violence counselling <\/a>is available from Full Stop Australia on 1800 385 578. In the UK, call the national domestic abuse helpline<\/a> on 0808 2000 247, or visit Women\u2019s Aid<\/a>. In the US, the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). Other international helplines may be found via www.befrienders.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week, two women and two girls were allegedly murdered in four days. The deaths of Lavanya Chappa,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":804392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-804391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/804392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}