Kimberley records worst rate of family assaults in State as WA domestic violence rate hits all-time high

The Kimberley continues to record the worst rate of family assaults in the State, with WA revealed as the domestic violence capital of Australia. According to WA Police statistics the Kimberley has recorded 2413 family assaults in 2025-26 so far, representing a rate of 6198 family assaults per 100,000 people. That is nearly 13 times the rate of the metropolitan area (482.5), nearly five times the regional WA rate (1303.3) and nearly 10 times the rate of WA as a whole. It comes as the rate of family and domestic violence has hit an all-time high across WA with cases soaring by 20 per cent in the past year. Latest figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on March 18 found WA had recorded 11,908 family and domestic violence offenders in 2024-25 — up 20 per cent from 2023-24, 51 per cent from 2022-23 and 71 per cent from 2021-22. Of the 11,908 offenders, nearly 80 per cent (9371) were men. WA had the biggest surge in offenders per State, compared to South Australia (10.6 per cent), New South Wales (7 per cent), Victoria (4.62 per cent), Tasmania (0.19 per cent) and Queensland (-2.33 per cent). The Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory recorded rises of 58.4 per cent and 14.3 per cent rise, respectively. It comes as the WA Ombudsman found 61 per cent of domestic violence cases it reviewed met the threshold for high risk, but correct process was only followed by police and specialist response teams in 2.5 per cent of those cases. Minister for Prevention of Family and Domestic Violence Jessica Stojkovski rejected the findings and instead attacked the messenger during question time in Parliament. “It is a backwards-looking report covering a point in time from some 16 months ago,” Ms Stojkovski said. “This is based on data that was collected over a four-week period in November 2024, it does not capture the current level of investment.” Human rights lawyer and Aboriginal women and children’s advocate Hannah McGlade said it was “quite clear that there are systemic limitations and weaknesses” in WA’s current FDV response. “For Aboriginal women, this is a particularly serious issue because of the over-representation of our women as victims and men as perpetrators,” she said. Almost half of the victim-survivors (39.7 per cent) and people who use violence (43.7 per cent) captured in the review identified as Aboriginal. Dr McGlade, who consulted on the Ombudsman’s report, said a peak body for Aboriginal family violence and safety in WA was one of the first steps towards addressing this over-representation. “We want to prevent the violence and keep women safe. If our systems are not performing in the way that we expect . . . then obviously it should be a priority to address and improve,” she said. “It’s a massive task, but it’s not beyond us. It’s a very big task, but it’s not something that’s unachievable.” Meanwhile, coercive control laws in WA remain an idea in waiting, with no fixed date even after a scathing review of the State’s family and domestic violence system. Roger Cook on Friday justified the Government’s open-ended timeframe of the new laws by reiterating a “phased approach” was necessary to achieve reform. We continue to work with the community around the evolution of policy and laws in relation to coercive control,” the Premier said. “Advised by the committee and in consultation with the community, we’ve developed our coercive control awareness campaign, which is an important part of . . . peeling back the veil of secrecy around FDV and all the forms that it takes.” New South Wales and Queensland criminalised coercive control as a standalone offence in 2022 and 2024 respectively.