Carina Garland (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yesterday Minister Clare made a very important statement regarding student safety and sexual assault on university campuses in Australia, announcing that he had appointed Ms Patty Kinnersly, the CEO of Our Watch, to be part of the working group on the prevention of and response to sexual assault and harassment, which formed part of the commitment that our government has made, through the interim report for the Australian Universities Accord process, to ensure that we do more to coordinate a national approach to doing better on the issue of campus safety.

This is an issue that affects me both personally and as a member of parliament representing a community with two universities in it. Every time I visit one of the campuses, whether Monash or Deakin, I speak to students—predominantly women—about their concerns for student safety on campus and the need to do more. At the outset here, I really want to commend all the people who have spoken to me and who have spoken to other members of parliament, or who have shared their stories with the expert panel of the accord to advocate for change and to raise awareness of this really terrible issue.

Unfortunately, it's not a new issue; it's an issue that has been pervasive and persistent for far too long. I remember my own experiences as an undergraduate student and as a postgraduate student living in a residential college and witnessing the devastation that sexual violence wrought on people's lives. I remember accompanying friends to hospital on many occasions. I remember calling people's parents in the middle of the night to tell them that their daughter had been sexually assaulted. I remember trying to navigate complaint processes; it was seemingly nobody's responsibility that violence had occurred on campus. It wasn't the responsibility of colleges, it wasn't the responsibility of the university and students had nowhere to go beyond the police—and sometimes that's not the place people want to go to raise their complaints.

As a researcher and someone who loves archival research, who finds comfort in understanding history to give me a perspective of issues in the world, I remember spending time around 15 years ago in the archives of the State Library of New South Wales. I realised that the issues I was confronted with, the experiences that I had myself and those of my peers around me, were not new things. There were media reports and reports in student newspapers for decades and decades about how unsafe campuses were for women, and nothing had been done. Every few years, it seems, issues were ventilated in the press and nothing happened. Nothing has changed, and we hear of the horrible cultures that exist—the horrible hazing rituals, the harassment, the assaults, the sexism and the entitlement that often enable abuse to happen on campuses.

I'm really pleased that at last our government, in partnership with advocacy groups and universities, is doing something about this problem. It has been a long time coming. Earlier, I praised the advocates who shared their stories and raised their voices in this particular accord process. But I also want to reflect on the work that so many have done on campus for generations to try to elevate this issue. It's hard not to think, too, about all the lives that have been disrupted and the futures which had their trajectories changed, often not for the better, because of the violence experienced on campus. I know too many people who disconnected from study, whose lives and relationships were absolutely devastated after they experienced violence on campus. I know that I too struggled through my own academic career due to not always feeling, and not being, safe on campus. I think of those generations of women who could have forged a place in the world different to the one they ended up with because they disconnected from studying. They walked away from really bright careers, and we will never know the potential that was lost because nobody acted to make sure they were safe on campus. I don't want any other generations of women to have to go through that

It's a really ambitious thing that we're taking on here. It's ambitious that we take on the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children and, in doing so, get rid of gendered violence within a generation. But if we don't, too many lives will be destroyed. Enough is enough, and I look forward to the progress that we will make to end violence on campus.

Zoe Daniel (Goldstein, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Every woman knows a woman who's been sexually assaulted at university, or she's experienced it herself: the horror, the shame, the isolation and the frustration at the lack of recourse that neither universities nor residential colleges will step up and take responsibility for. The distressing level of sexual assault and harassment at Australian universities has been well established by two comprehensive national student safety surveys. The 2021 survey results show the magnitude of the problem. One in 20 students reported being sexually assaulted since starting university. This equates to 14,300 sexual assaults per year or 275 sexual assaults each week, every week. The numbers are shocking. The lack of action from the university sector is also shocking.

When the Change the Course report was released in 2017, it recommended universities be transparent about sexual harm on campus. The 39 universities agreed to the recommendation, but fewer than a third of them are clearly reporting sexual violence. Some aren't reporting results in an easily accessible way, while others aren't reporting them at all. Universities must be held accountable for the sexual violence that occurs on their campuses and in residential colleges. The lack of leadership, duty of care and respect from the sector has been shameful. According to the founder and director of End Rape on Campus Australia, Sharna Bremner, right now student-survivors who have been raped by other students or staff can't even get their universities to make arrangements so they don't have to sit their exams in the same room as their rapist. Renee Carr, from Fair Agenda, says some institutions even fail to ensure known perpetrators of sexual violence aren't hired into positions of access and influence.

There are so many stories such as the young international student who was harassed repeatedly by a staff member. He sent unwanted texts that commented on her appearance. The woman raised the issue with her head of department and was told to just block the accused's phone number and not attend seminars or social events. There was the residential college with its annual 'feral women's night', where first-year residents are force-fed alcohol, told to remove their tops and serve drinks to older male residents while being subjected to derogatory comments and chants. This is grossly unacceptable behaviour that's allowed to continue because universities won't act.

If a student-survivor knows how to access the university's complaints process and has the time and the strength to file a report of their sexual assault, they often find that the complaints process itself is harmful to their educational progress and their overall wellbeing. The survey results confirmed the inadequacy of current university complaint systems. Fewer than half of current students know about their university's policies on sexual assault and sexual harassment or where to seek support or assistance at their uni. Only 5.6 per cent of students who experienced an incident of sexual assault reported it to the university. Just 29.7 per cent of those students who reported an incident of sexual assault to their university were satisfied with the reporting process. This is why I joined the courageous women from the STOP campaign and End Rape on Campus last week and called for an independent task force to monitor the sector's progress and impose penalties on those institutions that continue to ignore their responsibilities. Fair Agenda says, 'An independent oversight and accountability mechanism such as an expert led task force will deliver oversight that's independent of universities and residences and led by experts in sexual violence prevention and response; accountability when basic standards are not met; transparency around which institutions are providing appropriate and effective responses and prevention initiatives; and avenues for concerns to be raised by students, survivors and other stakeholders.

After meeting the student-survivors last week, I raised the issue of sexual violence in universities in a face-to-face meeting with the Minister for Education. To his credit, he immediately met with the STOP campaign that day. The following day, he announced a working group through the Universities Accord process, with an expert on the prevention of and response to sexual assault and harassment. I welcome the appointment of Patty Kinnersly as the expert advisor. Having worked in the violence prevention space for many years with Our Watch, Ms Kinnersly will bring a whole-of-institution approach to stopping gender based violence on campus.

Supporting victims-survivors is critical, but it should not be the sole focus. It requires multiple reinforcing actions across all areas of the university—culture, policies and structures—from the vice-chancellor down. Any meaningful change will require genuine and committed leadership from the vice-chancellors. This is the moment for universities to get back on track after cherrypicking recommendations from previous reports.

Speaking of reports, a new national survey is a must. One of the recommendations from the Change the course report was that universities should engage an independent body to conduct the survey every three years. This is important because up-to-date data makes for better decision-making and effective action. I still favour an independent task force, but an expert on the working group that reports directly to the minister is a good start.

We must get this right. There is too much at stake. Students-survivors tell End Rape on Campus that their rape was bad, but the response from their university was worse. This cannot be allowed to continue. Universities should be a place of joy and learning, not fear and distress.

James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate the opportunity to make a contribution on this sensitive and delicate topic. It's important that we talk about difficult issues, and this is absolutely one of them. I want to add to the debate a South Australian perspective that I think is important. But, first, I want to endorse the contributions of all others to this debate so far.

I want to highlight an awful, terrible chapter in South Australian history, which was the murder of Dr George Duncan in 1972. He had been employed at the University of Adelaide only six weeks earlier. He was a very distinguished law graduate and law lecturer. He was thrown into the River Torrens, adjacent to the Adelaide university campus, in what is suspected to have been be a gay hate crime probably perpetrated by South Australian police. That is an unsolved crime. Regrettably, it happened in an era where the culture in the police force, in particular, was one of cover-ups and protection.

Also, shamefully, at that time homosexuality was in the criminal code, so the South Australian police engaged in the victimisation, persecution and intimidation of homosexual South Australians, of whom Dr Duncan was one. It's relevant to this because the crime was committed upon him leaving the University of Adelaide campus. It was part of a culture of seeking to identify homosexual people studying at the university and intimidate them. In Dr Duncan's case, the worst circumstance, he was brutally bashed and thrown into the River Torrens, and he ultimately died. The silver lining was that it led to South Australia becoming the first jurisdiction to decriminalise homosexuality. I pay tribute to Murray Hill, whose son, Robert Hill, served in this parliament, in the Senate. It was Murray Hill, a Liberal member of parliament, that took the opportunity of that awful crime to take the lead on the decriminalisation of homosexuality in South Australia, and we became the first jurisdiction to undertake reform in that area.

I make this contribution on the basis that, thankfully, the culture at our universities is dramatically and drastically different from what it was back in the 1970s and earlier. I think those awful chapters in our history are important to reflect on, firstly to give us some comfort that we have made progress, but secondly to re-energise us on the need for continuous reform and to remind us that the job of ending sexual harassment and sexual violence is far from over. We shouldn't be overly depressed that we haven't made progress, but we need to balance that with the reality that a lot more work needs to happen. I think reflecting on people like Dr Duncan and the crime committed against him can be helpful to give us some inspiration on how important it is to keep necessary reform in this space going.

I conclude by pointing out that the other really important thing about this topic is that, in the community, there are sometimes stereotypes about where sexual harassment, sexual assault and sexual violence are and aren't occurring. I think sometimes there's a view that universities and university campuses are the more enlightened places in our society—that they have higher standards of behaviour and conduct on this topic and others compared with the average building site or mine, or other elements of our society and our economy, where people might think that bad behaviour on this topic is more prevalent than at others. What the 2021 survey indicates, and what us debating this topic indicates, is that at universities, very regrettably, the experience people are having around sexual harassment and sexual violence is seemingly in line with, if not in some cases worse than, the general experience of that in our society. So universities have got a real burden on them to take this seriously and do a lot more work than they are doing right now. I hope that they see the outcome of some of this data as an appropriate call for them to deepen their action in this area.

Addressing sexual assault, sexual harassment, sexual violence and sexual discrimination more generally, particularly gender and sexuality based discrimination, are something that as a society we all have to do together—and no-one can pretend or say that it's not their responsibility—because, unless we're all on a unity ticket about seriously addressing this, we're not going to achieve what we want, which is, of course, the complete eradication of this appalling behaviour.

I appreciate the opportunity to contribute on this. I thank the minister for bringing this topic to the parliament. It's important for us to talk about it and think about how we can do more, and I hope that in my time here we continue to see dramatic improvement on this topic. It's very important for us as a parliament to take national leadership on it to achieve the results we want in this regard.