Prime Minister Scott Morrison has conceded Australia "has a problem" with the way it treats women, describing a culture that not only excuses and justifies gender inequality but ultimately leads to violence against women.

Opening the two-day National Summit on Women's Safety, Mr Morrison promised to be "open-minded and ambitious" and said victims and survivors would be "foundational" as the government develops the next national plan to reduce violence against women.

"Right now, too many Australian women do not feel safe and too often, they are not safe and that is not OK. There is no excuse, and sorry doesn't cut it," he said.

"There is still an attitude, a culture that excuses and justifies, ignores or condones gender inequality that drives ultimately violence against women, and that is on all of us."

The Prime Minister said the collective goal was not just to reduce violence against women but to end it, describing the number of women killed by their current or former partners as a "national shame".

"I don't believe we can talk about women's safety without talking about men," he said.

"About the way some men think they own women.

"About the way women are subjected to disrespect, coercion, and violence."

Minister for Women Marise Payne told the summit that although levels of violence against women were still unacceptable, she had seen positive changes around attitudes towards violence.

"In my many years as a senator, I've seen enormous changes in societal attitudes towards the treatment of women," she said.

"To prevent violence and inequality, we must as a society challenge and call out the beliefs and behaviours of disrespect and those that condone, justify and excuse violence and disrespect".

Higgins, Tame criticise speech

The summit was called after former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins went public in February, alleging she had been raped by a colleague inside Parliament House in 2019.

Her story triggered an outpouring of anger and frustration and ultimately a national reckoning about the treatment of women.

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During his address, the Prime Minister shared a handful of "confronting" letters he had received from survivors, including one from a 74-year-old woman in Queensland who revealed she had been raped when she was 14 and was "still suffering".

Another letter told the story of a woman in New South Wales who had been sexually harassed by a work colleague in 1989 but at the time, she never thought to report the incident to police.

"The letters and emails reflected on the anguish and lifelong burden of assaults at work, at school, at uni, on a sports team, and at home, where they should have been safer than anywhere else in the world." Mr Morrison told the summit.

"Trauma compounded by silence. Through all the letters and emails, I felt that rage. The dread and the frustration that our culture was not changing."

Almost immediately following that speech, Australian of the Year and survivor advocate Grace Tame lashed the Prime Minister for re-telling women's stories.

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"Scott has just finished his opening keynote address at the Women's Safety Summit in which he appropriated private disclosures from survivors to leverage his own image," she tweeted.

"Gee, I bet it felt good to get that out," repeating the phrase Ms Tame said the Prime Minister expressed to her following her Australian of the Year speech in January.

Both Ms Higgins and Ms Tame are attending the two-day summit.

Calls for more affordable housing

Labor has again called on the government to spend more money on affordable housing as part of its efforts to prevent violence against women. 

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese said affordable housing needed to be made a priority, so that women leaving abusive relationships had somewhere to go. 

"The government must address the housing crisis when it comes to these issues and it must address it at this summit, this week," he said.

"There must be increased funding and increased support committed to by the government."