Domestic violence ‘contagious disease’

Family violence should to be deemed a contagious disease, making it immediately notifiable to health authorities, activist and former National MP Marilyn Waring has told politicians.

New Zealand plans to be the first country in the world to measure its success against how it does socially, culturally and environmentally. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said in February while announcing the 2019 Budget that the Government would introduce a tool and framework to include the wellbeing of New Zealanders as a measure of economic success.

AUT professor Waring appeared before the finance and expenditure committee to answer questions on living standards on Wednesday, when she cited family violence as one of the areas that lacked vigorous data for policy making.

Current policy responses to safety issues such as this raised questions about needing more police and that was not the point, she said.

‘‘We want to get away from that – it hasn’t helped.’’

There were already some great policies that were not fully implemented, Waring said.

When people were admitted to hospital, there was supposed to be a family violence audit done – some hospitals did more than 60 per cent of patients, while others did less than 10 per cent.

‘‘My take on this is intimate family violence now ought to be a contagion, which means that when police turn up, they would be compelled to report the incident and we can start to get proper data . . . We are one of the worst in the world for this, so we need to think about it in a different way,’’ Waring said.

‘‘One of the ideas I have for making it different is to call it a contagious disease, so then it is immediately notifiable.’’

Police were called out every four minutes to reports of family violence and in many cases, they were repeat offenders with no arrests, no prosecutions and no time out, she said.

‘‘If the police now had to report it to district medical officer of health as a contagious disease, we will start getting our hands on much better information . . . women are going to be much happier than going through the prosecution with the police and justice system.’’

The Treasury put out a paper last week for public consultation on the future work on the role of culture in the its Living Standards Framework, which will form part of a series of discussion papers aimed at promoting and supporting conversations about wellbeing in New Zealand.

‘‘We are one of the worst in the world for this, so we need to think about it in a different way.’’

Marilyn Waring