The government has committed to fund new men's wellness programs in a handful of remote communities in Northern Australia. The new programs will focus on teaching young men and boys about healthy relationships.
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00:00It's a $12 million commitment that's going to see these men's programs funded in three
00:07areas originally.
00:09They will be the communities of Barunga and Woogala, formerly known as Beswick, near Catherine
00:15here in the Big Rivers region, the NT remote community of Wadair, and thirdly in a series
00:21of very remote West Australian desert communities near the NT border.
00:27And so these programs are targeted at young men and boys.
00:31For the Woogala and Barunga communities, I spoke with the program lead who will be running
00:36these programs there, and he said that they're going to be targeting, at least at first,
00:42young men aged between 16 and 40.
00:45The erosion of culture continues to undermine what we see as substantial antisocial behaviour.
00:53The difficulty that we have out here is that the young men don't have strong mentors.
00:58The overall objective of this is to reduce the extremely high rates of domestic violence
01:04in this area.
01:05It's fitting that the ministers have come to Catherine today, which has really seen
01:09horrific rates of domestic violence.
01:12Just in the last, in the second half of last year, 2024, there were four women killed by
01:18men known to them in this Big Rivers region of the Northern Territory, and many more hospitalised
01:23with very serious injuries.
01:25So the point here is to try to stop domestic violence before it ever begins, before men
01:30ever become perpetrators, by building a stronger sense of identity and culture and purpose
01:36in young boys and men.
01:38And that's also going to be a key part of this program, is trying to teach good relationship
01:43skills and how to spot when a relationship is starting to turn bad, or if control, coercive
01:49control, is starting to be used in the relationship.
01:52So that's what the announcement is here today in Catherine.
01:57And these original three sites, as I say, will be targeted on remote Aboriginal communities
02:02across the Northern Territory and parts of WA.