Dr Allison Henry
November 25 marks the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, a day dedicated to raising public awareness about the pervasive issue of violence against women and girls worldwide. The United Nations suggests that solutions lie in “robust responses, holding perpetrators accountable, and accelerating action through well-resourced national strategies and increased funding to women’s rights movements”. This provides a useful benchmark to take stock of how Australia is travelling.
The international #MeToo movement, the Australian Human Rights Commission’s landmark 2020 Respect@Work report into sexual harassment in Australian workplaces, weekly horrific accounts of family and domestic violence, and a seemingly endless stream of sexual violence allegations in Australia’s parliaments and judiciary, the corporate sector, sporting codes and the entertainment industry, firmly placed gender-based violence on the national agenda.
In response, Australian governments have updated the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children, dedicated unprecedented but still insufficient funding to address family and sexual violence, and instituted reforms across Australian society. However, several developments in the last month demonstrate the need for more robust action.
In the federal Parliament, the Parliamentary Workplace Support Service, established in response to the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Set the Standard: Report on the Independent Review into Commonwealth Parliamentary Workplaces, released its first report. It revealed that it had handled 30 cases of serious wrongdoing, including sexual assault, stalking and intimidation, in its first nine months of operation, and reinforced concerns around whether perpetrators were being held to account.
The introduction of a new positive duty under the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth), legally obliging Australian organisations and businesses to take proactive and meaningful action to eliminate sexual harassment and unlawful conduct from occurring in workplaces or in connection to work, was among the key Respect@Work recommendations. Another recommendation involved enhanced measures to monitor sexual harassment prevalence, prevention and response in workplaces. The Workplace Gender Equality Agency in early November released its first data around how employers were responding to the positive duty obligation, finding that while nearly 99% of employers had a formal policy on work-related sexual harassment and discrimination in place, more than 1 in 4 employers were not monitoring how prevalent it is.
In February, Education Ministers around the country united to endorse the Action Plan Addressing Gender-based Violence in Higher Education, heralding far reaching reforms to regulate how Australian higher education providers respond to, and seek to prevent, gender-based violence. A Bill establishing the new National Student Ombudsman, providing higher education students with a streamlined trauma-informed complaints process, is expected to shortly pass parliament.
However, with just days left in the 2024 sitting calendar there is no sign of the promised new National Higher Education Code to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence. The code is the critical piece of the action plan, detailing government expectations around incident management and response, and the provision of support to students. An Australian Human Rights Institute report in February highlighted how most Australian universities were proactive in making information about their sexual violence policies and reporting mechanisms visible, but far less transparent about their reporting data indicating how those policies were being implemented. With a federal election due in the new year, both advocates and higher education providers are anxious that the much-consulted code does not fall victim to the prorogation of parliament or a potential change of government.
Little has been heard on another element of the action plan, a commitment to “enhance the oversight, standards and accountability of standalone student accommodation providers so that all students are saf, and feel safe, where they live”. The enduring need for this work was highlighted by the latest controversy at the University of Sydney following mass suspensions at St Paul’s College after a 'serious humiliation' incident.
These developments demonstrate that while Australian governments, businesses and universities have firmly signalled their intention to tackle gender-based violence, substantive progress on genuine systemic reform addressing violence against women and girls requires ongoing vigilance, sufficient resources and systemic oversight to ensure actions are matching their commitments.
Dr Allison Henry is a Research Fellow at the Australian Human Rights Institute, UNSW Sydney.