Fair Agenda

This week our movement helped achieve something great: the passage of new national standards that will make universities safer for students.

The National Higher Education Code to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence is the culmination of 8 years of joint campaigning by the Fair Agenda movement with partners like End Rape on Campus Australia, Dr Allison Henry and the STOP Campaign. And on Monday it was passed by the House of Representatives – the final hurdle to it becoming law. 

You may remember from my communications over the many years of this campaign the harm and failings of many university approaches to sexual violence to date. Amongst the kinds of issues our movement’s advocacy has been focused on addressing include: 

• Universities' and residences' actively harmful and traumatising responses to student reports of sexual assault, including:
  • Victim-blaming during reporting processes,
  • Failing to provide basic safety measures,
  • Threatening to sanction survivors if they tell others about their complaint, and
  • Failing to provide student survivors with updates or outcomes after they filed complaints about sexual assault.
• Universities' failing to screen staff being hired into positions of power and influence over students for prior convictions of sexual assault; protection orders; or active complaints about their use of sexual violence.
• Universities and residences failing to remove known perpetrators of violence on campus; or provide basic protections against them causing further harm, and
• Creating onerous barriers to student survivors accessing necessary accommodations or adjustments after rape.

The new National Code will set detailed and enforceable standards that will address these kinds of issues.

Its contents were shaped by representatives of Fair Agenda and our campaign partners over months of consultations. The 30 pages of the full Code contain critical and meaningful detail that I can’t convey in full here, but its features include:

• Requiring universities to ensure their prevention education and training is: accessible, trauma-informed, evidence-informed; and monitored and evaluated.
• Requiring universities' responses to gender-based violence to be person-centered and trauma-informed.
• Requiring universities to respond to any disclosure of gender-based violence with a risk assessment to manage and monitor identified risks to a survivor’s safety on an ongoing basis.
• Requiring alternate teaching and living arrangements be provided for a victim-survivor where necessary to ensure their safety. 
• Requiring universities to have timely and safe processes.
• Requiring a provider to impose sanctions proportionate to conduct – including exclusion or expulsion. 

Each university’s leader will be responsible for ensuring these clear and specific standards are met - and there is also power for the federal Department of Education to enforce financial penalties where a university fails to meet these standards.

This reform will be transformative for student safety. I’m so proud that our movement has played a critical role in building pressure for this reform; and thankful to the thousands of Fair Agenda members and partners who have contributed to this campaign in so many different ways over the past 8 years. 

This major reform was 8 years in the making; and the product of persistent collaboration between advocates and movements. If you’d like to see some of the collective campaign effort leading to this point, you can see a snapshot the Fair Agenda team created of the advocacy that led to this reform here.

Today we mark this significant step forward for improving safety in universities. But sadly they are not the only institutions failing and actively harming victim-survivors of sexual violence. So tomorrow we refocus our efforts building momentum for the many other changes needed – including access to timely care and forensic medical exams; access to sexual assault services for healing and recovery; and more trauma-informed court processes. We hope that you’ll join us in these important campaigns as well. You can add your support on Fair Agenda’s campaigns page here. 

We also know that this change comes too late for many. To every victim-survivor that has been harmed by their university or TEQSA’s response to their report – we’re so sorry for what you were put through. You deserved better. We hope you’ll do something to take care of yourself today.  

If you have been impacted by sexual assault you can access support from state and territory sexual assault counselling hotlines on: 

NSW - NSW Sexual Violence Helpline: 1800 424 017
QLD - Sexual Assault Helpline: 1800 010 120
VIC - Centres Against Sexual Assault: 1800 806 292
SA - Yarrow Place: 1800 817 421
ACT - Canberra Rape Crisis Centre: (02) 6247 2525
WA - Sexual Assault Resource Centre: (08) 6458 1828
NT - Ruby Gaea: (08) 8945 0155
TAS - Sexual Assault Support Service: (03) 6231 1817

This election is a critical opportunity to put our movement's priority issues in front of candidates, demonstrate widespread public mandate for action, and secure their commitments to act. 

In our most recent survey, Fair Agenda members told us they wanted to see action on sexual and domestic violence, healthcare and reproductive rights, care work, and support for those doing it tough. 

That’s why we’ve asked candidates across the country to commit to concrete action in these areas by taking Fair Agenda’s Pledge for a fair and gender equal future. Now, you and other voters can see where your local candidates stand—and either thank them for taking the pledge or call on them to step up their commitments.

Just head to https://fairandequalpledge.org/, enter your address and email, and you’ll see who’s standing in your electorate and whether they’ve signed on to the Pledge.

This election will shape the policies that impact our safety, economic security and agency for years to come. From reproductive care, to economic support for parents and carers, to the systems that should keep women safe — we need leaders who will act.

To ensure leaders know what action to take, Fair Agenda has worked with peak bodies, policy experts, service providers and advocates to identify specific policy changes candidates can make if elected. Through the Pledge we’ve asked every candidate if they’ll commit to support these changes.

Visit our election website displaying these commitments to help you and other voters make informed choices.

Authorised by Renee Carr, Fair Agenda, 36-38 Gipps St Collingwood VIC 3066

Hear from three extraordinary national leaders:

• Sandra Creamer AM is an Adjunct Professor of Public Health at the University of Queensland. She is a proud Waanyi/Kalkadoon woman, a lawyer, and a national leader on domestic violence and women's health issues. With decades of lived and professional experience advocating for the health, safety, and rights of First Nations women, she is currently the CEO of the Australian Women's Health Alliance and chairs the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Council, contributing to the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032.
  
  
• Yumi Lee is a powerful voice for those often excluded from conversations on gender-based violence. As CEO of the Older Women’s Network NSW, she drives change on issues impacting older women, including violence perpetrated in aged care, housing insecurity, and homelessness. Yumi was appointed to the Federal Attorney-General’s Lived-Experience Expert Advisory Group on Sexual Violence and was awarded the NSW Women’s Legal Service Bright Sparks Award for Advocacy and Reform.
  
  
• Evie Clayton is a trailblazing survivor advocate from Queensland, driving urgent reforms to support victim-survivors. A survivor of domestic and sexual violence with a background in frontline services, Evie campaigns for policy change grounded in the real needs of victim-survivors. Her powerful advocacy ensures survivor voices are heard by decision-makers and the public.

At this event, you’ll:

• Hear from powerful speakers on what real action on domestic violence, women’s health and safety looks like.
• Hear about the reform agenda laid out in Fair Agenda's Pledge for a Fair and Gender Equal Future — and why your voice will be crucial in holding the next parliament to account.
• See which political candidates have committed to action to address these issues— and which haven’t.
• Get equipped to take action and help drive change in the first 100 days of the new parliament.

Let’s ensure every candidate knows: we expect real action and are ready to fight for it.

Today Education Minister Jason Clare has introduced legislation to create a National Student Ombudsman - enacting the first-part of the nation-wide Action Plan Addressing Gender-Based Violence In Higher Education.

Leading student safety advocates End Rape on Campus Australia, The STOP Campaign and Fair Agenda marked this milestone from the gallery; and have praised the reform as an important step.

Sharna Bremner, Founder & Director, End Rape on Campus Australia said: 

“For too long rape survivors have been abandoned and harmed by their universities; and failed again by the systems that were supposed to hold them accountable. From next year higher education students will finally have a way to file a complaint about their university’s harmful response to their report of sexual violence. Most importantly, those complaints will now actually be investigated, and there will be consequences for universities and residences who put student safety at risk.”

Camille Schloeffel, Founder & Chair The STOP Campaign added:

“Victim-survivors have been calling out for change for years - dealing with universities and residences that haven’t been willing to do what’s needed to support student safety, or even provide basic adjustments to support victim-survivors to continue their education. We shouldn’t have had to share the horrors of what we experienced to get change. But we’re so relieved that Minister Clare has listened, and acted quickly.”

Renee Carr, Executive Director of Fair Agenda said: 

“Universities have been failing victim-survivors of rape for too long. For years survivors, students and advocates have been calling for oversight, transparency and accountability in this space - and we’re thrilled that we have an Action Plan to deliver that. 

The creation of the National Student Ombudsman is a critical piece of that solution. When combined with strong legislated standards through the upcoming National Code, these reforms will finally deliver safer universities.”

The groups credited this reform to the strength and perseverance of victim-survivors who have spoken out about university and residence’s harmful actions over many years.

The National Student Ombudsman is set to commence operations in February 2025. The associated National Code legislation is in development, and advocates hope that a strong model will be introduced before the end of this year, and supported across the parliament. 

Federal parliamentarians will today debate the creation of an “Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission”, with advocates warning the model proposed isn’t strong enough to realise the change needed. 

Fair Agenda, the Australian Democracy Network and Transparency International Australia have all voiced concerns that the restriction of the enforcement body’s power to recommend sanctions in cases of serious parliamentarian misconduct will undermine its ability to meaningfully improve parliamentary safety and standards.

Quotes attributable to Renee Carr, Executive Director of gender equity movement Fair Agenda: 

“Australians want our politicians to be held to higher standards of behaviour. We reasonably expect any misconduct by parliamentarians to be addressed by a strong, independent body with the power to, at the very least, recommend appropriate consequences. Instead, in cases of serious parliamentarian misconduct, this proposal will take the question of sanctions from the independent body, and hand it back to someone’s peers in the parliament.”

"We need a parliamentary standards system that ensures matters of misconduct are brought above the politics of the day. This requires independent recommendations on appropriate sanctions.”

"If a parliamentarian is engaging in misconduct; the public deserves to know what our independent standards enforcement body thinks is an appropriate response; and whether the parliament follows that advice. That is what has just been legislated in Victoria. It's beyond disappointing to see the federal parliament introducing a weaker model, when it is supposed to be setting the standard.”

Crossbench members in both chambers will introduce amendments to strengthen the proposed IPSC model, by requiring the IPSC to recommend appropriate sanctions in cases of serious parliamentarian misconduct; and requiring the Privileges Committee to report its reasons if it departs from these recommendations. Amendments will be proposed by Andrew Wilkie MP in the Lower House and Senator Larissa Waters in the Senate. 

Lines attributable to Andrew Wilkie MP, Independent Member for Clark and member of the Privileges Committee, says:

“The Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission bill goes some way to addressing the problems that were raised in the Set the Standard Report.”

“But there is one glaring omission. That is where a matter involves a ‘serious offence’, the power to impose sanctions is taken away from the IPSC and given to the Privileges Committee. This flies in the face of the Set the Standard recommendation for a fair, independent, confidential and transparent complaints processing mechanism which will hold parliamentarians to account for poor behaviour.

“I plan on moving an amendment to remedy the Government’s Bill. My amendment enables the IPSC to include recommendations for any sanctions in its report to the Privileges Committee. Moreover, should the Privileges Committee choose to deviate from the recommendations of the IPSC, it must table its reasons for doing so when it reports its decision.”

Lines attributable to Greens leader in the Senate and spokesperson on Women, Larissa Waters, who also serves as a member of the Parliamentary Leadership Taskforce:  

"The Greens share advocate’s concerns that the suggested MP sanctions are far weaker and less transparent than we would have liked.

“The Greens pushed for stronger sanctions, including higher fines for MPs and more consequences for Ministers when there is an adverse finding.

“The Greens will move amendments to the Bill to give the IPSC power to suggest sanctions, as suggested by Jenkins, and if Privileges depart from that suggestion, table an explanation as to why. 

“Australians need to trust that their elected officials will be held responsible if they misbehave, and a strong and transparent process is needed for that confidence.”

Other members of the crossbench have also expressed their support for a stronger IPSC model.

Lines attributable to Kylea Tink MP - Independent Member for North Sydney, and member of the Joint Select Committee on Parliamentary Standards said:

“The Commission is not as strong as it could or should be. We know self-regulation doesn’t work – in any sector. Placing the Privileges Committee in charge of sanctioning MPs found to have significantly breached the standards is like asking arsonists to put out their own fires and means there is no guarantee that disciplinary actions will be impactful.”

“As with debate around other new integrity measures – including the National Anti-Corruption Commission  – we must have a process and consequences that hold people to account and offer an appropriate level of transparency.”

“Importantly, we must also acknowledge that, as a democracy, we are not breaking new ground here. In fact Australia is behind a number of other parliaments, including the UK, and for this reason I think we should be stepping into this boldly. Australians expect it and it’s time our parliament met those expectations.”

Lidia Thorpe, Independent Senator for Victoria:

"This draft legislation falls short of the Set the Standard report recommendations.The IPSC must be able to make sanction recommendations, and if the committee decides not to follow them, they should explain why. We can't have politicians policing one another and deciding on their own penalties without transparency or accountability."

"The Privileges Committee is government controlled and dominated by Labor and Coalition politicians. Everyone on it is white and most are blokes. When we're talking about serious misconduct, often rooted in misogyny and racism, we can't blindly trust a political committee to decide on sanctions with no transparency. It's a joke. This is the reason we needed an independent IPSC in the first place."

"I support the amendments proposed by the crossbench in both Houses and I'll be introducing further amendments to strengthen the ability of the IPSC to tackle misconduct."

Zoe Daniel, community Independent Member for Goldstein says: 

“Kate Jenkins’ report was called Set the Standard for a very good reason. Because that’s what the horrifying accounts of workplace culture in Parliament House demanded; that we should lead the way and our workplaces should be role models for employers everywhere.”

“If we are to win the trust of the community in general and women in particular parliament should legislate the recommendations for transparency and accountability in the Jenkins report in full.”

Helen Haines, Federal Independent Member for Indi says:

“There has been longstanding acceptance of unethical and toxic behaviours in Parliament that would not be tolerated in other workplaces or settings. It has eroded public faith in Parliament and our democracy and I am glad we will have an independent commission to address this. 

“We must ensure the Independent Parliamentary Standards Commission and the Privileges Committee operate with transparency if we want to build trust with people who work here and with the public. 

The Bill as currently drafted means serious findings could be made about an MP, but they could face no sanction and the public could never know. I will support amendments to bring more transparency to this process.”