Australian Story: March 28

Monday’s Australian Story has an exclusive story on Victorian MP Fiona Richardson.

Introduced by Caroline Jones, this episode details how Australia’s first Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence is a survivor her own troubled family history, in Tanzania.

FIONA RICHARDSON MP: “I thank my lucky stars that the way in which the Family Court and Family Law is actually implemented in this country right now was not in place when my family dissolved and fell apart. Those systems are failing us, they are well past their used by date.”

DANIEL ANDREWS, Victorian Premier: “I had no knowledge, no sense that she had been a survivor of the very thing that I was asking her to be the minister for.”

HAMISH RICHARDSON, Fiona’s brother: “I haven’t been back to Tanzania for forty six years there’s a bloody good reason for that okay.”

VERONICA POWER, Fiona’s mother: “Richie beat me, he raped me, he sodomised me, he did everything to humiliate me and it was something that I didn’t – it was horrible, it was horrible.”

ALASTAIR RICHARDSON, Fiona’s brother: “I remember the first – the first punch which was to the face um and I can’t recall anything from there.”

FIONA RICHARDSON: “Tears is a sign of weakness in politics you know that don’t you … and, by the way too, it’s not a side of me that people have seen.”

When Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews asked Fiona Richardson MP to be Australia’s first Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence, he had no idea of her troubled family history.

On the eve of the State’s Royal Commission into Family Violence report, Australian Story reveals the private life of the Victorian minister charged with implementing its recommendations.

Fiona Richardson and her two brothers were born in Tanzania. In this exclusive, Australian Story follows the Richardsons back to Dar Es Salaam as they explore their family history, in an attempt to understand the violence that has left enduring scars.

Ms Richardson admits her personal story is now informing her in her approach to family law cases.

But is Fiona Richardson too close to the issue to watch over her portfolio objectively?

FIONA RICHARDSON: “These are the people that I most love in this world and talking about those experiences at times can be tough but it has given me this unique insight into victims of family violence.”

Monday, March 28 at 8pm on ABC.