THE HON TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW
SKY NEWS AUSTRALIA
THURSDAY 16 OCTOBER SEPTEMBER 2025

TOPICS: DOMESTIC, FAMILY AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE; WOMEN’S PRISONS; COST OF LIVING

LAURA JAYES: Joining me live is the Social Services Minister, Tanya Plibersek. Tanya, thanks so much for your time. This has been a fairly long time in the making. There's been a lot of consultation in New South Wales. Do you think this move from Chris Minns in New South Wales is best practice and should be followed around the country?

MINISTER FOR SOCIAL SERVICES, TANYA PLIBERSEK: Well, I really congratulate state governments who are taking family, domestic and sexual violence seriously. I know that this comes after a long campaign from Tabitha Acret, Mackenzie's mum in response to the horrific murder of her daughter. And I really want to congratulate Tabitha Acret for her staunch demand that her daughter's life be properly acknowledged and respected and that the lives of other women be properly acknowledged and respected. I think state governments have really been stepping up, as has the Commonwealth government, to say that family, domestic and sexual violence are always unacceptable. Always unacceptable. And that these murders in a domestic violence setting are particularly, particularly heinous. I mean, you should be able to expect to be safe in your own home. You should be able to expect that you are safe from a partner or former partner. And Australian women for too long have been the victims of violence, seen lives taken by men who are supposed to love and protect them.

JAYES: It shouldn't even get to that point where we're talking about non-parole periods for men, mostly men I would say, that murder their intimate partners. But, you know, we read about this in the newspaper, see it on our screens almost day in and day out. I note, you know, the horrific murder of Lilie James in those circumstances at St Andrew's School, and I want to acknowledge the writing of Clare Walker, this is in the Sydney Morning Herald today, who's spoken to one of their journalists talking about not just the heinous crime, how it affected women teachers in particular, but the attitudes within the system. Can you expand on that? Because obviously you well know about this story. But also, whether you see any evidence of those attitudes changing?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, I do. I mean, I said at the time when the former principal of St Andrew’s seemed to say that the murderer of Lilie James was, you know, by all accounts a great guy, that this sort of violence excusing behaviour and commentary from leaders in our community really contributes to the problem. Like, as the mother of two sons, the idea that their school principal would somehow excuse murder by saying that the good guy just snapped. That sort of attitude really contributes to the violence accepting attitudes that we still see in some parts of our community. It is so important that leaders, principals, politicians, sports coaches, the men that boys look up to make it clear that violence is never acceptable. It's never acceptable. And particularly in a school system, we have the stewardship of these young men. We are looking after them as they form their attitudes to the world. As we are raising them up we need to inculcate from the earliest age that domestic and sexual violence are never acceptable.

JAYES: It's really difficult when we talk about -

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Can I say one other thing, Laura?

JAYES: Oh please, yep.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I was just going to say, about Clare Walker coming out and describing her experience as a teacher and the lack of support she felt when she raised issues about how important it was to address domestic and sexual violence in the school context, how unsupported she felt. I mean, that should never happen. We know that a lot of teachers are facing attitudes from some of the young men in their care and in their charge that they're being influenced by this sort of online misogyny, the Andrew Tate's of the world. Those female teachers also deserve to feel safe in their workplace.

JAYES: Absolutely they do. I wonder, and I just want to play devil's advocate for a moment because I think it's really important, because I think a lot of people, when this kind of shocking crime happens, it's not so much the excusing of the perpetrator's behaviour. I don't think anyone would intentionally do that. It's more about reconciling what someone was on the outside to what they were obviously capable of doing on the inside. And I think a lot of people try to reconcile with that. In terms of the messaging and what Clare faced, I think the biggest problem there was that she made her concerns clear, she was backed up by other teachers and the principal was unwilling to accept any feedback, if I can put it like that. But as you and I have discussed many times in the past, a lot of young men are being pushed to corners of the internet, the manosphere, the Andrew Tate's of the world, because they feel like they don't have a voice, they're just being spoken at, not to, if you like.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's really important to acknowledge. Everybody craves a sense of belonging and in a lot of ways the connections that we've seen in the past, in society aren't, those bonds aren't as strong. People don't as regularly go to church. They're not as regularly members of a volunteering organisation or a sporting group as they used to be. Volunteering's under real pressure in Australia. So I do, I think you're right in one respect, Laura, people want a sense of belonging, and that really applies to boys and young men, too. And we've got to give them that positive sense of belonging with really great, strong, positive male role models. And part of being that really great, strong, positive male role model is working with young men about how you resolve conflict, how do you resolve rejection, how do you, you know, how do you grow up to be a good man yourself? There's so many good men out there who can be those positive role models. It's so important for them to take that on.

JAYES: Yeah, absolutely, it is. And you spoke about how states, particularly New South Wales, I would say leading the way here. I think there has to be credit to the opposition as well, Mark Speakman when he was an Attorney general, who did a lot of work in this area as well. I can't help but look at kind of the juxtaposition between New South Wales and Victoria today when it comes to protecting women. It's not an entirely unrelated story, there's a transgender man convicted of crimes against his own daughter. Because he's transitioning, he's allowed to be housed in a female prison. If we're talking about messaging and the messages, you know, men and women get in this day and age, when it comes to protecting women and looking after each other, what kind of message does that send?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: I think women deserve to be safe everywhere, and that includes in jails. We know that so many women who end up in jail have had experiences of child sexual abuse themselves, sexual assault, and the idea that they would be at risk of further sexual assault in jail is really troubling. I'm not going to comment on individual cases, but I would say very strongly that wherever they are, women deserve to be safe.

JAYES: Yeah. Again, without getting into the individual case. I mean, if you're a perpetrator of such a heinous crime against your own child and you can say, oh, actually, I'm transitioning, I need to be in a female prison because that's how I feel. How should that be weighted?

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, look, I'm not going to comment on the individual case. Just back to this basic principle, Laura, that if someone is a risk in jail to other prisoners, a risk of sexual assault in particular, then you need to make sure that their fellow prisoners, those women in a women's jail, are safe.

JAYES: But does it, Tanya, does it also come down to the rights of a perpetrator? Yes, they do have rights still, but should they be above anything else or should they be less of a consideration, let's say.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Look, every human being has rights, Laura. That's a fundamental belief of mine. But you don't have the right to endanger someone else. You don't have the right to live your life in a way that endangers someone else's safety, security or peace of mind.

JAYES: I just quickly want to ask you about one final other thing. New data today shows that essential workers would be more specific to your electorate as well. The people that keep our states, our country running cannot afford even any rentals. It was far less than 1% of rentals near the places that they work.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Yeah, it's a real shocker. And that's why we're doing two really important things. We're raising wages for those essential workers. The minimum wage has increased by about $9,000 a year since we came to government. And in areas like early childhood education and care and aged care, more than that, because we know those traditionally female dominated industries have been underpaid, we're increasing wages by about 15% for those workers. That's really important. But we're also, of course, as you know, investing $43 billion to make housing more affordable across Australia. We've got our 1.2 million homes target. We've got 5% deposits for people who can perhaps buy a home of their own. And when it comes to Commonwealth Rent Assistance for close to a million people, we've increased Commonwealth Rent Assistance by close to 50%. That's about an extra $1800 a year extra Commonwealth Rent Assistance. So, we know that housing affordability is a huge issue. We know that a lot of essential workers are locked out of the suburbs where they're working. We want to make housing more affordable. It's not something we can do overnight, but we are investing and moving and also increasing wages to close that gap. It's such an important thing to do.

JAYES: Tanya Plibersek, thanks so much for your time.

MINISTER PLIBERSEK: Always a pleasure to talk to you, Laura. Thank you.

ENDS