menshealthaustralia.net

 Minister misleads Parliament on domestic violence

A leading men’s health organisation today claimed that the Minister for the Status of Women, Hon Gail Gago MLC, misled Parliament by maintaining that false statistics on the Government’s Don’t Cross the Line anti-violence campaign website are accurate. Men's Health Australia also lodged an official complaint with the Ombudsman last Thursday after five months of attempting to draw the Minister's attention to the major statistical errors on the website. The complaint alleges that the Office for Women acted unreasonably by publishing and not correcting this false and misleading information.

Men’s Health Australia spokesman Greg Andresen said, “The Facts and Stats page of the website is extremely misleading to the public. It clearly inflates statistics about domestic violence against women while understating statistics about domestic violence against men.” Men’s Health Australia is supportive of all efforts to reduce interpersonal violence in the community but is concerned that the regular use of incorrect or misleading ‘statistics’ by Governments unfairly stigmatises men and boys as violent and abusive, while simultaneously denying services to male victims of violence.