https://www.news.com.au/national/queensland/news/pauline-hanson-says-these-things-happen-after-dad-burns-three-kids-and-wife-to-death/news-story/fb00413289e497d8da1e3eb47293312d
Pauline Hanson has suggested killer dad Rowan Baxter may have been “driven to it” when he burned his three children and wife to death, adding “these things happen”.
Speaking on the Today show this morning, she called on Australians not to “bastardise all men” as a reaction to the despicable crime in Brisbane on Wednesday where Baxter killed his three children and wife by setting them on fire.
“Don’t bastardise all men out there, or women for that matter, because these things happen,” she said.
On domestic violence she said: “A lot of people are driven to this, to do these acts for one reason or another.”
Her comments on the Today show have prompted former host Lisa Wilkinson to ask why the One Nation leader is given a “regular weekly platform” on breakfast television.
“Why oh why does breakfast TV continue to give this woman a regular weekly platform?” she tweeted. “She is dangerous. Worse, she is taking these attitudes to her role as deputy chair of the Family Law inquiry.”
Ms Hanson said domestic-violence-related murders committed by women didn’t appear to get the same amount of coverage as those committed by men.
- The Daily Telegraph, 24th Feb 2020
I must admit that I have serious problems in comprehending why this country is the way that it is. I do not understand why people want to come out as apologists for hideous actions but we keep on seeing this time and time again.
I can expect people like Andrew Bolt who is a convicted racist to make racist comments, and I can expect Gerard Henderson to make vile comments about poor people, but I do not understand why the Commonwealth would reward Betina Arndt with the Order of Australia, nor do I understand why the Commonwealth would want Senator Pauline Hanson within a thousand yards of the Family Law Inquiry.
I personally think that the Commonwealth is suffering from a serious kind of moral failure if it wants to make murder acceptable and domestic violence tolerable.
I am not claiming to have some secret understanding of human nature but I have been working adjacent to the legal profession and industry for more than 20 years, and the biggest conclusion that I can come to is that people are universally awful.
Unlike Ms Hanson, I am prepared to bastardise all men out there and all women for that matter, precisely because these things happen. The one thing that you learn after listening to hundreds of criminal cases as I did as a court recorder, is that the profile of a criminal is literally everyone. If given appropriate means and motive, quite literally everybody is capable of larceny and malicious damage to life, liberty, and property.
I do not understand why the increasingly functionally fascist rightist media in this country wants to perpetuate the myth of men somehow being pushed to the edge, or why it wants to blame victims for what has happened to them. I do not understand what kind of social engineering advantage or outcome is trying to be developed here.
No, the overwhelming reason why we find women vastly overrepresented in domestic violence situations and why men are overwhelmingly the perpetrators of said violence comes down to a single word - power.
You find in vast majority of domestic violence cases, that there is either a larger difference between the physical size of the people in it, than in couples where domestic violence doesn't happen. In jurisdictions like the United States, that physical size difference is partly negated by the existence of firearms and when that happens, domestic violence actually also correlates with the availability of those firearms.
The almost unstated through line here, is that where you have domestic violence cases, it almost always comes down to the ability of someone to exercise physical power.
There is no such thing as being 'driven to it" as Ms Hanson claims. As I have said, I do not think that men and women are wildly different from each other; which means to say that the very very very heavy bias in the statistics of who does exact violence upon whom, is not necessarily because of massive psychological differences between the sexes. In actual fact, to suggest that men are somehow driven to the edge, or mere beasts who can not control their primal urges, is to excuse 50% of the population of bad behaviour by writing a bizarre narrative which denies that their agency exists, when clearly it does.
It took a series of very deliberate actions for this monster to burn his wife and three children alive. Hannah Clarke and their three children did not deserve to die; so the assertion that these actions which were premeditated are the results of a monster being pushed around involuntarily by the vicissitudes of fate, is quite frankly an evil nonsense. Proper policy, of which Ms Hanson has been employed to help develop, should be looking at, at absolute minimum, harm minimisation. Trying to apologise for this in my opinion, should instantly invalidate someone from being part of the policy making process because they have demonstrated to be a bad faith actor.
Of course the realm of family law is always fraught with heartache and pain, but if there is to be a review, then it should be looking at improving both the outcomes and the quality of life for all of those involved. Maybe there does need to be some form of adjustment to recognise that men are interested parties but that should be in line with the general principles of creating peace, order and good government in and of society.
There should have also been some level of intervention well before this because clearly this person was hurting; so there has been a critical failure of the systems which should have ensured that both Ms Clarke and his immediate and pressing needs were being met.
As for Ms Hanson's suggestion that domestic-violence-related murders committed by women didn’t appear to get the same amount of coverage as those committed by men, there is a very good reason. Of total homicide figures, Women murdered by their boyfriends/husband accounts for about 30% of statistics while Men murdered by girlfriends/wives is only about 3%. When it comes to self-reporting of domestic violence data in Australia, then roughly 17% of women and only 5% of men report that they have been a victim at some point in their life. I would suggest that if Ms Hanson doesn't see domestic-violence-related murders committed by women getting the same amount of coverage as those committed by men, then that's because the number of incidents itself is a biased data set. It could also be that Ms Hanson, simply hasn't bothered to go looking¹. If anything Ms Hanson appears to have a conflict of interest and a personal sense of vengeance on behalf of her own son who by the way pleaded guilty in court to breaching an Apprehended Violence Order².
We have had two previous inquiries to do with the family law system and both of those recommended that children’s safety be the driving force behind any changes. Those inquiries came from the House of Representatives in 2010 and the Australian Law Reform Commission in 2019. The only thing that I can think of is that this latest inquiry which has included the appointment of Ms Hanson is deliberately designed to bury the recommendations of the two previous inquiries. At any rate, she should be removed.
¹https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/geelong-woman-angela-surtees-charged-with-husbands-murder/news-story/7c874acb7c442adcc2190b0471a9c1c0
¹https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-19/katie-anne-castel-pleads-guilty-to-manslaughter-husband-stabbing/10916264
²https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/former-family-court-chief-judge-labels-hanson-s-comments-appalling-20190918-p52sm8.html
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