The panel will be co-convened by the Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence commissioner, Micaela Cronin, the executive director of the Commonwealth Office for Women, Padma Raman, and the secretary of the Department of Social Services, Ray Griggs.
The panel members to be named on Tuesday are author and educator Jess Hill, University of Melbourne research fellow Zac Seidler, diversity and inclusion consultant Todd Fernando, RMIT Centre for Innovative Justice associate director Elena Campbell, Victoria Police assistant commissioner Leigh Gassner, and Summers.
A research project at Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) will be completed next month to guide the panel on the best place to spend federal money to prevent violence against women.
“This rapid review will bring together experts and provide practical advice to government to help us end the scourge of domestic violence,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement.
Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth described violence against women and children as a “national shame”, and Minister for Women Katy Gallagher said the panel’s advice would lead to more effective and targeted ways to prevent violence, including to stop women being killed.
Summers, a top adviser to former Labor prime ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, is professor of domestic and family violence at the University of Technology, Sydney, and has been a prominent voice in calling for greater action on the problem.
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While Summers said some men had changed behaviour in a generational shift, she noted that research from ANROWS suggested some young men tolerated violence against women.
The agency’s findings last December found that young respondents to a survey were still significantly less likely than those aged 25 years or older to “strongly disagree” with some attitudes that minimise violence.
ANROWS also found that most young Australians recognised that consent must be active and ongoing, but it said fewer young respondents “strongly disagreed” that a man was justified in forcing sex when the woman had initiated kissing and then pushed the man away.
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