Australia's second action plan to end violence against women and children is being developed as the government defends its resistance to holding a royal commission on the issue.
Major consultation has opened to develop the next stage of the ten-year national plan to end violence against women and children.
The consultation aims to focus on the practical and systemic solutions that will have the greatest impact over the next five years.
The importance of tackling the issue of gender-based violence could not be overstated, Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek said.
"Violence is learnt as respect is learnt," she told ABC Radio National on Friday.
"All of us need to change, all of us need to keep this front and centre, not just when another horrific death is reported, but always (because) this is going to take a whole community to change."
A petition for the government to hold a royal commission into the killing of Australian women and girls launched by anti-violence advocate Sherele Moody has gained more than 100,000 signatures.
Asked about this earlier in the week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese flippantly replied that "there's calls for royal commissions about everything" and all it would do would be to "fund lawyers".
But Ms Plibersek defended his response, saying the government already knows what it needs to be doing to reduce violence and a commission wouldn't provide additional answers.
"This is not a question we need to investigate," she said.
"We know what drives gendered violence, we know what the solutions are, we have to get on with the action."
She said the prime minister cares about the issue of violence against women, particularly having witnessed his own mother's experience.
"He was exposed to domestic violence as a child, he saw his mother exposed to it," she said.
"He's spoken about that, not often, but he's spoken about that and the toll that that took on his family and on him as a child.
"It is something that we take seriously ... we need to continue to drive the actions that we know make a difference."
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