There are moments in our lives that seem incredibly ordinary at the time but stay with you forever.
I grew up in Richmond in Melbourne in the 1960s; well before it was the much more polished inner-city suburb it is today. My parents owned a pub, which was loud, busy and full of life. With much of that life coming in the form of wharfies, union blokes and colourful characters.
I was one of nine children in a big Irish Catholic family. My mother was warm, funny and incredibly strong. My father worked endlessly and was hardly ever at home. He was almost always behind the bar, pulling beers or balancing books. His name was Mick. If I’m honest with myself, for a long time I barely knew him.
A moment that stays with me, is the day my mum finally had enough of bearing the brunt of domestic labour and moved us all into the pub. I remember looking over at my sister one evening at our new home, pointing at Dad and saying, “that’s my dad”. Even now, I don’t know if I was trying to convince her or myself of that.
With age, I came to understand my father differently. He loved us deeply, but like many men of his generation, love was expressed through sacrifice rather than affection. He provided financially, worked hard and played hard. That’s what being a ‘man’ meant to him.
Years later, I watched him playing with his grandchildren. He was completely alive in the moment. Laughing, reading the paper with my nephew on his lap, just soaking up the moment. At one point, he turned to my mum and said softly, almost to himself: “I really did miss out on a lot, didn’t I Nance?” It was one of the most heartbreaking things I’ve heard anyone say.
In that moment, I realised something profound: my father had not chosen distance because he didn’t care – he had inherited a rigid idea of manhood that told him his value came from work and sacrifice. He was denied the full experience of connection, tenderness and love of his children.
Thankfully the world has changed a lot since my father’s generation. Movember’s More than a Provider Report found that fathers today are 70 per cent more involved than their own dads. Two in five do not want to parent the way they were parented. It’s a good sign that things are changing.
But for many men there is still an impossible expectation about what it means to ‘be a man’. And in 2026, there is also the added barrage of noise from the warped world of the manosphere and people like Clavicular and Andrew Tate.
It’s not shocking then that 63 per cent of young Australians still believe boys are expected to be “manly” all the time. More than a third think it’s weird for boys to talk to one another about their feelings at all.
Ben Vasiliou from the Man Cave describes the phenomenon as boys being taught to “wear a mask” and suppress vulnerability, leaving them disconnected from themselves and others.
Boys are taught that the way to be a real man is to stay silent, be tough and don’t seek help. In fact, men are only 37 per cent likely to seek help compared to 50 per cent of women. It’s no wonder then we have such confronting statistics on men’s mental ill-health and why men are accounting for over three-quarters of death by suicides.
But we also know these same rigid, outdated ideas of masculinity and manhood are contributing to harm against women, children and communities. Indeed, Australia’s national leader in preventing violence against women and children, Our Watch, has consistently found that cultures of masculinity emphasizing aggression, dominance and control are factors of men’s violence against women.
We know that men perpetuate the overwhelming majority of violence in Australia, including around 95 per cent of intimate partner violence and 98 per cent of sexual violence. But its impacts are felt across our entire community – women, men and children. One in four women and one in 14 men have experienced intimate partner violence since the age of 15, while one in four Australians have experienced abuse or neglect as children.
Make no mistake, there will never be an excuse for violence. Ever. Men who use violence must be held accountable.
But at the same time, we must also acknowledge that the system - while privileging men in many ways - is also harming men in others, which is harming women. Plural truths can exist.
There is no panacea to ending men’s violence, but broadening definitions of masculinity to include things like compassion, respect and emotional openness will make a difference.
Because the simple matter of fact is that gender equality isn’t a zero-sum game; it benefits men and women. In the words of Bell Hooks “Men need feminist thinking…Patriarchy is destroying the well-being of men, taking their lives daily”.
As a society we must address the conditions which are leading to the horrific statistics of men’s violence against women, as well as supporting men to seek help for their physical and mental health.
This is why the Special Envoy for Men’s Health Dan Repacholi MP and I decided to launch the Healthy Men Community Conversations Project.
It’s a project linking the Special Envoy’s role in supporting men to seek help for their mental and physical health, as well as my role in preventing violence against women and children as the Assistant Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence.
It’s about meeting men where they are at. We will be travelling across the country to host community forums and to visit service providers who work with men. We’ll hear directly from men, women, teachers, coaches, community leaders, health workers and people working in family, domestic and sexual violence prevention.
This Project will help the Albanese Labor Government learn more about the pressures facing men and boys to wear that ‘mask’ of manhood, and the ways in which we can empower young men to feel more connected or empowered to seek help.
The support exists, but we need to change the culture so that asking for help is normal, encouraged and free from stigma.
I believe ‘manhood’ and fatherhood have come a long way since I was a girl. But every time we see a woman or child harmed at the hands of a man, we are reminded that our journey towards safety, respect and equality is far from over.
Rigid interpretations of masculinity and mental ill-health will never be an excuse for men to hurt and kill women and children. Never. But the more we understand them as relevant factors for men’s violence, the more we must address them.
This will be good for all men and women. My father, for example, was not a violent man. He was a man with a heart full of love, but little time and space to place it. As I endeavour on my work with the Special Envoy, I hope to one day create a country where no man looks back on his life and thinks “I sure did miss out on a lot, didn’t I”.