Australian of the Year Grace Tame has called for tougher penalties for violent offenders, saying in addition to being a survivor of paedophilia she was subject to several abusive relationships.

Her revelation came in response to a question from Eileen Culleton, whose sister Anne-Marie was raped and murdered by Jonathan Bakewell in 1988, in Darwin.

Ms Culleton said Bakewell, whose sentence was reduced from life to 20 years in 2004, had breached parole four times.

She has since started a petition that calls for the crime of murder with sexual assault to be made a standalone crime, carrying a mandatory life sentence with no parole.

Asked if she would support such a law, Ms Tame said she would like to see harsher sentences for the perpetrators of violence against women and then revealed more horrific details of the abuse she had suffered.

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"Part of the solution is harsher sentencing," Ms Tame told Q+A before she called for more work to be done on prevention and education of the younger generation.

Ms Tame then revealed she had been in abusive relationships.

"I don't often talk about this and I don't think I've said it publicly: As well as being a survivor of paedophilia, because I had no frame of reference after that, I got into violent relationship after violent relationship," she said.

"I can honestly say that intervention and punishment doesn't really stop the problem in a lot of cases.

"We really need to be injecting funds and putting our attention on preventing these things from happening in the first place." 

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw agreed, saying he hoped Australia could look at prevention in the future.

"The absence of the fear of crime is a measurement of how successful police are, and unfortunately women are feeling less safe," Commissioner Kershaw said.

"We probably need to look at, 'Do we have the right processes and legislation?' to look at what Grace is talking about.

"Prevention is great. If we can get into the prevention space, that's the best space to be in."

'We're not being prioritised'

With the national summit on women's safety coming up in the next week after an initial delay due to the Sydney COVID-19 outbreak, the panel discussed what the goals should be.

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Federal Minister for Women's Safety Anne Ruston said: "It needs to … put on the stage people who are experts so that the Australian public can have the opportunity to come and have a look at the issues that are confronting those people that are trying to deal with family, domestic and sexual violence in our country at the moment."

Senator Ruston added it was important for Australians to hear the voices of those "who want to be heard".

But Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong said that was not enough.

"I think there should be a higher ambition, which is achieving change," Senator Wong said.

"Ultimately, the government will be judged on what change flows from this summit.

"My view is, yes, we want the voices of survivors and victims heard, [but] secondly, we don't just want a to-do list for the states, which is so all too often Mr Morrison's go to answer … to-do lists for someone else.

"There ought to be a comprehensive response, particularly for all the areas for which the Commonwealth has responsibility."

Senator Wong then called on Ms Tame to be involved in the discussion.

Ms Tame repeated her frustrations with what she said was a lack of prioritisation of survivors of abuse.

"I'm involved in the summit and earlier today I participated in a roundtable discussion where I was one of 49 people and I was the only lived-experience survivor there," Ms Tame said.

"We're not being prioritised...  there was [also] only one man in 49 people there, and it sort of makes you feel like here are these women's issues, so we'll make the women deal with them by themselves.

"There was a glaring lack in the discussion today and that is the focus on prevention.

"So much of this is [reaction]. It's, 'Let's put a bandaid on this, let's respond to this.' Where is the prevention?

"I was in this discussion with people from the sector who were experts … and there are evidence-based solutions and evidence-based methods of prevention that are ready to be implemented, but it's just a question of political will, really, at this point."

Asked to respond to the criticism, Senator Ruston acknowledged the summit must lead to action.

"You're right, Grace. We absolutely have to make sure that this is not just a talkfest that comes out of this summit," Senator Ruston said.

"We actually have to deliver the real change you're talking about."

Accusations police get it wrong when it comes to Indigenous cases

Another issue raised on the show was that of sexual assault within Australia's Indigenous population.

Marcia Langton, a professor of Indigenous studies at the University of Melbourne, was asked why many Indigenous women in Australia did not report assaults to the police.

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"There are thousands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in out-of-home care precisely because when Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander women make a call to the police for help, it immediately triggers, especially here in Victoria, the child protection authorities who arrive to almost universally conclude that the children are not safe because a woman has asked for help in a family violence or domestic violence or sexual assault case" she said.

"And [they] remove the children.

"This is why most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women will not report family or domestic violence or sexual assault.

Professor Langton then accused police of arresting victims rather than perpetrators.

"Another problem is that women themselves are hysterical if they've been assaulted, sexually assaulted, especially in front of their children, and in cases of extreme violence," she said.

"Because of their trauma, the police arrest them and not the perpetrator.

"The police believe the perpetrator of the violence and remove the woman, and so now we see skyrocketing rates of Aboriginal women incarcerated in prison precisely because they called in to the police."

Asked for an answer to that problem, Professor Langton called for better policing but she said racism was an issue.

"Every social worker in the child protection system just about will conclude that Aboriginal children are at risk and remove them and there's no triaging of this problem.

"The authorities need to move women and children to a safe place immediately and not separate children from their mothers."

Commissioner Kershaw, who was previously NT Police commissioner, said he accepted better police training was necessary.

However, he also highlighted unique challenges when it came to domestic violence in the Indigenous community, pointing to high rates of sexual assault and violence in remote communities.

Watch the full episode on iview or via the Q+A Facebook page.