At the Adelaide Oval on Thursday night, and in eight other AFL games this weekend, there will be an “activation”. Players, coaches and umpires will link arms in the centre square and the ground announcer will tell us that enough is enough, that we have to stop killing women and that the only acceptable number of dead women is zero. Everyone will bow, the industry will pat itself on the back and the focus will quickly return to the footy.
And absolutely nothing will change. Jess Hill, whose book See What You Made Me Do: Power, Control and Domestic Abuse should be mandatory reading for anyone opining on this issue, repeatedly stresses how performative pieces, platitudes and kicking the can down the road aren’t working any more. Only reforming and properly funding our legal system – from family law to child protection agencies – can ensure accountability for perpetrators, she writes.
