MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced new funding on Wednesday to help women escape domestic violence and a crackdown on misogynistic online content in reaction to an uptick in homicides committed by current and former male partners that he described as a national crisis.
Albanese said his government would invest 925 million Australian dollars ($599 million) over five years to financially support women and children escaping violence.
The government also proposed new measures to tackle factors that it says exacerbate violence against women, such as violent online pornography and misogynist content targeting children and young people.
The measures would include legislation to ban deepfake pornography and more funding for an Australian regulator to pilot age-assurance technologies to protect children from harmful online content.
“This is, indeed, a national crisis and it’s a national challenge and we’re facing this with a spirit of national unity,” Albanese told reporters after a meeting with state and local authorities.
Tens of thousands protested in cities around Australia over the weekend to draw attention to the deaths of 27 women so far this year, allegedly caused by acts of gender-based violence. The death toll had reached at least 28 women by Wednesday.
The government leaders will meet again in three months to discuss progress.
“I'm satisfied it's a further step forward,” Albanese told reporters.
“Can we be satisfied when a woman’s losing her life on average every four days? Of course not,” the prime minister said.
“I’ll be satisfied when we eliminate this as an issue, when we’re not talking about this as an issue, when women are not feeling as though they have to mobilize in rallies,” he added.
The Australian Institute of Criminology reported that in the 12 months through June 2023, 34 Australian women were killed by an intimate partner. That is the latest complete fiscal year for which the institute has data and represented a 31% increase in victims from the same 12-month period a year earlier when 26 women died.
The increase defied a longer-term downward trend in Australia.
Since 1990, there had been a 66% decrease in “intimate partner homicide rates” across Australia, the institute’s research manager Samantha Bricknell said.
The lowest rates of intimate partner homicides were in the 2020-21 and 2021-22 fiscal years, a result that reflected pandemic restrictions.
“We have gone back to sort of the rates that we were seeing pre-COVID. So, what we’re really interested to see going forward ... is, is this a sustained increase? That’s something that Australia needs to be worried about,” Bricknell told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“It is very concerning and understandably the Australian population are very concerned,” she said. “More recent data suggests that it is going up, but hopefully we’ll see that that slight uptick turns around and continues to decrease.”
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks during a virtual National Cabinet meeting to discuss the national crisis of gender-based violence, Wednesday, May 1, 2024. Albanese announced new funding to help women escape domestic violence and a crackdown on misogynistic online content in reaction to an uptick in homicides perpetrated by current and former male partners that he described as a national crisis. (Gaye Gerard/Pool Photo via AP)
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Germany’s foreign minister arrived in Kyiv on Tuesday in the latest public display of support for Ukraine by its Western partners, although deliveries of promised weapons and ammunition from NATO countries like Germany have been slow and have left Ukraine vulnerable to a recent Russian push along parts of the front line.
Annalena Baerbock renewed Berlin’s calls for partners to send more air defense systems, as Russia pounds Ukraine with missiles, glide bombs and rockets. Germany is the second-biggest supplier of military aid to Ukraine after the United States.
Ukraine’s depleted troops are trying to hold off a fierce Russian offensive along the eastern border in one of the most critical phases of the war, which is stretching into its third year.
Germany recently pledged a third U.S.-made Patriot battery for Ukraine, but Kyiv officials say they are still facing an alarming shortfall of air defenses against the Russian onslaught.
The Kremlin's forces have used their advantage in the skies to debilitate Ukraine's power grid, hoping to sap Ukrainian morale and disrupt its defense industry.
Baerbock, accompanied by Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko, toured a thermal power plant in central Ukraine that was heavily damaged on April 11. In the plant’s scorched interior, workers of Centrenergo, a state company that operates the plant, were still scooping up rubble several weeks after it was hit.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Kremlin’s forces are still focusing their efforts on the eastern Donetsk province and northeastern Kharkiv region, where explosive-laden Russian glide bombs are wreaking destruction on military and civilian areas.
“This brings us back again and again to the need for air defense — for additional defense systems that could significantly mitigate the difficulties for our warriors and the threat to our cities and communities,” Zelenskyy said late Monday on social media.
Zelenskyy claimed Ukraine’s forces are still in control of the contested areas, though Russia says it has captured a series of border villages.
It was not possible to independently verify either side's battlefield claims.
Baerbock had planned to visit Kharkiv on Tuesday but the trip had to be called off for security reasons, German news agency dpa reported. Almost 11,000 people have been evacuated from Kharkiv border areas since Russia launched its offensive actions there on May 10.
A Russian overnight drone attack hit transport infrastructure in Kharkiv city, the regional capital, damaging over 25 trucks, buses, and other vehicles, regional Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said Tuesday. Seven people were injured, he said.
Ukraine’s general staff said the frequency of Russian attacks in Kharkiv slowed on Monday, though fighting continued.
Russian troops are also conducting reconnaissance and sabotage raids in Ukraine’s northern Sumy and Chernihiv regions, shelling border settlements and laying more minefields, according to Dmytro Lykhovii, Ukraine’s general staff spokesman. The front line is some 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) long.
Baerbock was due to meet with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba in Kyiv. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been resisting appeals from Ukrainian officials to provide Taurus missiles, which are equipped with stealth technology and have a range of up to 500 kilometers (300 miles).
The German- and Swedish-made missiles would be able to reach targets deep in Russia from Ukrainian soil. But Berlin has balked at that prospect, saying that sending the missiles would bring a risk of it becoming directly involved in the war.
The restriction on not allowing Ukraine to fire at Russia has denied Kyiv the ability to strike at Russian troops and equipment massing for attacks on the other side of the border, a Washington-based think tank said.
“These U.S. and Western policies are severely compromising Ukraine’s ability to defend itself against current Russian offensive operations in northern Kharkiv (region) or any area along the international border where Russian forces may choose to conduct offensive operations in the future,” the Institute for the Study of War said in an assessment late Monday.
Baerbock said in a statement that Ukraine’s prospective membership of the European Union is “the necessary geopolitical consequence of Russia’s illegal war of aggression.”
Ukraine has made “impressive progress” and must not let up in reforms to the judicial system, in fighting corruption and on media freedom, she said.
Germany will host a reconstruction conference for Ukraine next month. Rebuilding the country is predicted to cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
Geir Moulson contributed to this report from Berlin.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
German's Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock speaks to Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko during official visit to a thermal power plant which was destroyed by a Russian rocket attack in Ukraine, Tuesday, May 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
Police officers inspect the site of the Russian missile attack, with a dead body in the foreground, in the outskirts of Kharkiv, Ukraine, Sunday, May 19, 2024. The missile hit a recreation area, killing five including one pregnant, and injuring 16. (AP Photo/Andrii Marienko)
A woman cries as police officers inspect the site of the Russian missile attack that hit a recreation area killing five including one pregnant, injuring 16 in the outskirts of Kharkiv, Ukraine, Sunday, May 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrii Marienko)
Destroyed resort compound is seen from above after a Russian rocket attack near Kharkiv, Ukraine, Sunday, May 19, 2024. According to officials, several people were killed in this attack. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
