The Newcastle Domestic Violence Committee NSW are tireless advocates for a better, safer future free from violence for everyone.

On Tuesday 31 May Jodie Harrison MP joined the Newcastle Domestic Violence Committee [DVC] to celebrate the launch of a new website—newcastledvc.au—which brings together agencies, organisations and community members across the Newcastle region.

The site is a quick, safe way for those experiencing family or domestic violence to get the support they need in our local area.

"For too long, domestic and family violence was kept in the shadows—not talked about, barely acknowledged and unseen for the society‑wide scourge that we always knew it was," Ms Harrison said in a statement on the launch in NSW Parliament on 7 June. 

"No social group is immune to domestic and family violence. Perpetrators do not heed economic class or ethnic divisions. But we know that the overwhelming majority of victim‑survivors are women.

"The statistics are daunting: Across the world, one in three women will experience physical or sexual violence in their life; being a woman is the single biggest risk factor for experiencing domestic, family or sexual violence in Australia; Aboriginal and First Nations women experience domestic violence at higher rates than women from non‑Aboriginal backgrounds; and women living with a disability are more at risk than women without disabilities.

"They are our friends, family members and work colleagues. Even now after the issue has gained unprecedented awareness, uncertainty remains for so many victim‑survivors. Many are second‑guessing themselves, unsure whether what they experienced was really domestic violence. Many ask themselves, "How can I get help?"

"For culturally and linguistically diverse victim‑survivors, language barriers can present extra difficulties when accessing assistance. The lack of quantitative data about how widespread the problem is often prevents us from targeting our policy responses in the most effective way.

"It means that we do not know where to focus resources or how to ensure that what we are doing to meet the challenge is actually working. That is what makes the new website so important: It not only connects victim‑survivors to support but also captures data that can help the committee to do its work. The committee has always recognised that domestic and family violence impacts people from across society. It connects victim‑survivors with specific supports for older people, LGBTIQA+ people, people with disability, Aboriginal and First Nations people, and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds."

The site includes information about domestic and family violence—its causes, what it looks like and what can be done to address it. It links directly to local support services and is a repository of resources, including a plain English guide to apprehended domestic violence orders.

"That is vital for victim‑survivors who may have difficulty navigating the complexities of courts, which, quite often, are ineffective," Ms Harrison said.

"Just as importantly, the site includes professionally translated resources in a number of languages: Arabic, Chinese, Dan, Kiswahili, Kurdish, Thai and Vietnamese. Importantly, the website protects the safety and privacy of users.

"A person who is researching or using the site can click on a bar at the top of the page to close it instantly. They are redirected by Google to a new tab at weather.com and their immediate browser history is erased so that a perpetrator cannot reopen the page by clicking on the back arrow. The committee will never share or on‑sell users' data. The data it collects is anonymised for general patterns.

"I thank the chair of the Newcastle DVC, Lisa Ronneburg, for her leadership. I also thank the committee members and countless volunteers, who give freely of their time and energy to advance this important cause, and the professionals who work day in, day out to support victim‑survivors through an impossibly difficult time.

"I acknowledge and thank the victim‑survivors for their courage and truth‑telling. We believe their truth and will never stop advocating for a better, safer future free from violence for everyone."