Domestic violence delusions: feminists pull the wool over our eyes

"You can't hand out domestic violence orders like parking tickets." Well, that's exactly what they have in mind for residents of our Deep North.

The speaker was Terry O'Gorman from the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties, protesting on television news about the latest domestic violence madness taking over his state. Under sweeping "reforms" announced earlier this month, police officers will be able to hand out 12-month Police Protection Directives on the spot – bypassing current court processes.

The Queensland Police Union has been running a grim television campaign featuring a full screen shot of a closed fist and a vicious, snarling man – making the case that police are drowning in domestic violence cases, which they say comprise up to 90% of their workload.

Between 2012-2024, the number of calls for service to domestic violence incidents increased from 60,000 to more than 192,000, an increase of 218 per cent. Queensland Police received almost 200,000 domestic violence related calls in 2024, which means they are responding to these cases every three minutes.

"Policing has been crumbling under this pressure," says Police Minister Dan Purdie, explaining the current situation is unsustainable, with officers unable to address issues like burglaries, car theft and road safety.

Yet if we take a step back, we can see that the rate of actual violence is going down in this country – according to the official data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Between 2005 and 2021-22, the 12-month prevalence rate of physical violence declined for both men and women:

• Men – from 10% in 2005 to 6.1% in 2021-22

• Women – from 4.7% in 2005 to 2.9% in 2021-22

Homicides are also going down, even between intimate partners. Last year The Australian Institute of Criminology released the latest figures which demonstrated a 30-year decline in intimate partner domestic homicide – "The female intimate partner homicide rate decreased overall by two-thirds (66 per cent) in the 34-year period between 1989-90 and 2022-23."

And according to our best official domestic violence data, The ABS's Personal Safety Survey, less than one percent of women report physical violence from their partner or ex-partner in the previous year – and that too is decreasing.

We are not seeing any real increase in threats to women's safety. Yet alongside the mercifully small numbers of cases of genuine violence towards women, we are witnessing an epidemic of false allegations, or complaints based on unpleasant but essentially trivial behaviour – a raised voice, slammed door, unpaid credit card. These are now construed as coercive control, financial abuse, threats of violence or any of the long list of behaviours which set men up as perpetrators of domestic violence.

Last year I published an interview with two Queensland police officers voicing their anguish about being forced to spend their time dealing with complaints they know to be manufactured or grossly inflated. They described the widespread cynicism amongst their colleagues at the ideological, male-baiting spin driving the whole domestic violence industry and their resentment at being the ones required to enforce unjust laws targeting men.