Introduction: The Problem in Context

A summary of a police report of a fight, resulting in the arrest of a woman for breaching a civil domestic violence court order, introduces the problem addressed in the book: the male, and White-centric, nature of the law and its implications for Black women. The chapter proceeds with a discussion of the approach to the analysis of the problem. The second part of the chapter provides the context of the problem. It starts with a demographic overview of Australia’s First Nations Peoples, including the distribution of the population, the proportion who speak a language other than English at home; and the gap between First Nations Peoples and other Australians in wellbeing, overall. A summary of Australia’s civil domestic violence protection order system and its operation follows.

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