This piece of propaganda today deserves mention. It’s typical of domestic violence claims: vague, unaccountable and misleading.

Vague, because the article gives no indication of what the claimed “increase of 53% in family violence offences since Saturday morning” was based on, how this figure was measured, exactly what it was measuring, or what the number of “offences since Saturday morning” was being compared to (Friday morning? Average for the year? Number for the corresponding period last year?).

Unaccountable, because the figures were described as “provisional statistics” that can be easily excused if and when any valid figures emerge.

Misleading, (i) because the police refer to “family violence offences” when none will have yet been proven to be offences through a proper process, and not all domestic callouts will even involve an alleged offence, and (ii) because the police claimed Womens Refuge was an organisation that could help “people suffering from stress”. Womens Refuge of course will refuse to help any male who contacts them about stress, and will be very likely to increase any woman’s stress by encouraging her to blame the man for her stress and behaviour and by putting pressure on her to break up her family.

Sorry for being a doubting Thomas, but I suspect this figure and the whole claim is a whole lot of bumkum, probably designed to elicit public support for the draconian “police protection orders” that certainly will protect police employment security but will already be causing huge injustice towards men. The fact that the police prejudiciously referred to “domestic violence offences” supported the suspicion that this media release was a self-justifying propaganda exercise.