Nat Barr has called on Australian men to join campaigns across the country to demand an end to violence against women.
The Sunrise presenter made the request on Monday after tens of thousands of Australians marched in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Canberra over the weekend.
The demonstrations were sparked by growing outrage over a series of gender-based murders: 26 women murdered this year, or one every four days.
Among the victims were five women who lost their lives after knifeman Joel Cauchi, 40, carried out their stabbing at Westfield Bondi Junction on April 13.
Barr said protests and discourse around gender violence were overrepresented by women and needed the participation of men.
Sunrise presenter Nat Barr (pictured) has called on men to join women in demonstrations and speeches calling for gender-based violence to be declared a national emergency.
“We also need these demonstrations and these cries to not just be women saying ‘help us,'” she said.
“We need men, don’t we, to participate in this conversation.”
Federal Minister Tanya Plibersek, whose daughter spoke of her own experience of an abusive relationship, and National MP Barnaby Joyce also weighed in on the protests.
Plibersek said young people were exposed to a “smorgasbord of violent misogyny” online.
“Society is trying to fix it, on the one hand, and on the other, we have the exact opposite force working against us in trying to make things better,” he said.
‘We need to look at what governments are doing, what the police are doing, what the courts are doing, what the emergency services are doing.
“But we also need to look at what is happening especially to young men online that supports these misogynistic attitudes.”
Barr agreed, saying “anti-women” content and pornography was being sold online to young people, before throwing the question at Mr Joyce.
Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of major cities last weekend (pictured) following a spate of women allegedly murdered by men across the country last month.
The New England MP described the current state of community violence as “appalling” but was reluctant to lump all men together as abusers.
“(Not) all young people are going to become criminals,” he stated.
“You have to say, well, let’s look at the big picture here and family formation is absolutely vital in that.”
Plibersek said a number of problems arose from women not knowing that men had violent tendencies until it was too late.
“Of course, not all men are violent, most men would be horrified by that,” he said, “but we don’t know who they are until we form a relationship with them.”
