Experience of violence

Living peacefully and feeling safe

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Release date and time
15/09/2025 11:30am AEST

Released 15/09/2025

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Metrics

  • Proportion of people who experienced physical violence in the last 12 months
  • Proportion of people who experienced violence by an intimate partner in the last 12 months

Why this matters

A counterpart to feeling safe is being free from violence.

Violence is where a person is harmed by another person. This takes on various forms, including but not limited to physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, and neglect.

Progress

Physical violence

In 2021-22, the Personal Safety Survey found an estimated 6.1% of men (579,400) and 2.9% of women (283,400) experienced physical violence in the last 12 months. This is a decline from 2005 for both men (from 10%) and women (from 4.7%).

The impact of COVID‑19 lockdowns should be taken into consideration when analysing changes to rates of violence over time.

  1. People aged 18 years and over.
  2. The 2021-22 Personal Safety Survey was conducted between March 2021 and May 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout this time, government policies were in place to reduce the spread of COVID-19, including stay-at-home orders, border control measures, limits on gatherings, and social distancing rules. The survey results should be understood and interpreted within the broader context of the wide-ranging changes to everyday life during the pandemic.
Data Source
ABS Personal Safety, Australia 2021-22 – Table 3.1

The ABS Crime Victimisation Survey also collects information about peoples’ experience of violence. Due to differences in methodology between the Personal Safety Survey and Crime Victimisation Survey, results should not be directly compared.

According to ABS Crime Victimisation, Australia, between 2008-09 and 2023-24, the rate of physical assault and/or face-to-face threatened assault decreased from 6.0% to 3.4%, including:

  • a decrease from 7.3% to 3.7% for males
  • a decrease from 4.8% to 3.0% for females.

Intimate partner violence

In 2021-22, the Personal Safety Survey found an estimated 1.5% of women (147,600) experienced intimate partner violence in the last 12 months, a decline from 2005 (2.3%).

  1. People aged 18 years and over.
  2. Includes cohabiting partner, boyfriend/girlfriend/date, and ex-boyfriend/ex-girlfriend. Ex-boyfriend/ex-girlfriend is included in the definition of intimate partner from 2016 onwards.
  3. The 2021-22 Personal Safety Survey was conducted between March 2021 and May 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic. Throughout this time, government policies were in place to reduce the spread of COVID-19, including stay-at-home orders, border control measures, limits on gatherings, and social distancing rules. The survey results should be understood and interpreted within the broader context of the wide-ranging changes to everyday life during the pandemic.
  4. Intimate partner violence statistics in 2021-22 for men has a high relative standard error and is considered too unreliable to measure changes over time.
Data Source
ABS Personal Safety, Australia 2021-22 – Table 3.1

Emotional abuse by a partner

The Personal Safety Survey 2021-22 also found that females (3.9%) were more likely than males (2.5%) to have experienced emotional abuse by a cohabiting partner in the last 12 months, both rates having decreased since 2016 (from 4.8% and 4.2% respectively).

Disaggregation

Further information about experiences of violence in the last 12 months is available in ABS Personal Safety, Australia 2021-22 and ABS Partner Violence 2021-22.

Disaggregation available includes:

  • Sex
  • Type of violence
  • Sex of perpetrator
  • Relationship to perpetrator

Further disaggregations available for experiences in the last two years include:

  • Age
  • Sex
  • Sexual orientation
  • Disability status
  • Family and housing characteristics
  • Labour force status
  • Education
  • Country of birth
  • Language characteristics
  • Remoteness
  • Financial stress
  • Self-assessed health status
  • Income
  • Socio-economic disadvantage.

ABS Crime Victimisation, Australia includes complementary statistics about people who experienced physical/threatened/sexual assault. Due to differences in methodology between the Personal Safety Survey and Crime Victimisation Survey, results should not be directly compared.