Australia has recorded a significant rise in the rate of intimate partner homicide, according to the latest police data, with Indigenous women nearly seven times more likely to die at the hands of a current or former partner.
New statistics released by the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) have revealed that in the latest reporting period – from July 2022 to June 2023 – there we there were 232 homicide incidents recorded by state and territory authorities, a four per cent increase on the previous year.
Rates of female partner homicide have increased by 28 per cent since the last reporting period, with the vast majority of people murdered by a male intimate or ex-intimate partner being women.
The homicide victimisation rate for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women was 3.07 per 100,000, compared with 0.45 per 100,000 for non-Indigenous women.
AIC Deputy Director Rick Brown said the latest figures were an important baseline to measure the federal government’s progress of achieving its goal of reducing rates of intimate partner homicide by 25 per cent in the next five years.
He noted that despite a recent increase, overall rates of homicide in Australia have dropped by 52 per cent since the late 1980s.
Between 2022-2023, about 69 per cent of homicide victims in Australia were men.
Indigenous men are more than eight times more likely to be killed in a homicide incident than non-Indigenous men.