Richard Dowling (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I note this is not my first speech. No student should be forced to choose between their education and their safety. For years now, the evidence has been clear and deeply troubling with respect to gender based violence in higher education communities, and specifically I refer to sexual assault and harassment. In earlier stages of this debate we heard a lot about statistics and figures, but I will repeat one of them from the National Student Safety Survey of 2021: one in 20 students reported sexual assault. Of these, only five per cent made a formal complaint. What does that mean? It means that, in a cohort of a thousand students, 50 have been assaulted, yet fewer than three of those assaults were formally reported. These are distressing figures. Just think about it: in any lecture theatre across the country, about five out of every hundred students in the room have experienced sexual assault since starting university. These figures are, of course, worse for females and even worse for students that identify as gender diverse and for students with a disability. Sadly, most have been left to carry that burden in silence, without knowing how to get the support they need and deserve. Starting university is supposed to be one of the most exciting periods of your life; it turns into one of the most terrifying.

Violence impacts a victim-survivor's mental and physical health and wellbeing. It can and does also negatively affect students' educational outcomes. They may be less able to attend or participate in classes, and in some cases they will withdraw from their studies altogether. I note the STOP Campaign submission to the Universities Accord panel, which found:

Multiple respondents detailed that they now live with mental health impacts, such as PTSD, anxiety, depression, suicide attempts, disordered eating and panic attacks as a result of their experiences. Many respondents also noted they were unable to go to class or attend campus in general due to fear of running into their perpetrator. Some were also forced to continue living in the same accommodation as their perpetrator, constantly living in a state of fear. Socially, victim-survivors often chose to not engage in social events as they felt unsafe. Some respondents also noted the destruction of past relationships and difficulty creating new relationships as a result of their experience of violence and harm.

That is a pretty disturbing submission from the STOP Campaign. Staff are also victims of gender based violence, and it can obviously result in reduced performance, absenteeism and more turnover of staff. These impacts directly challenge the core mission of universities and the education they provide.

It's our responsibility in this place to ensure proper governance, transparent reporting and accountability, to make sure that harm is prevented and that, when harm does occur, it is properly responded to—that is, a response that ensures people are heard and have access to the trauma informed support they need to order to successfully achieve their educational outcomes. That's precisely what the Universities Accord (National Higher Education Code to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence) Bill 2025 and the Universities Accord (National Higher Education Code to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence) (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2025 set out to do. These bills are a key outcome of the Action Plan Addressing Gender-based Violence in Higher Education, which all education ministers across the federation signed up to. Once passed, these bills will hold higher education providers to consistently high standards to proactively prevent and respond to gender based violence.

The Universities Accord (National Higher Education Code to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence) Bill 2025 introduces a National Higher Education Code to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence. It will ensure our universities and other higher education providers put safety first. It strengthens prevention, improves responses when harm happens and holds providers accountable for how they perform, right down to student accommodation. The Minister for Education will be able to set a national code that lays down best practice standards, and every provider will need to meet those standards.

To monitor and enforce the code, a new specialist gender based violence unit will be established within the Department of Education. Vice-chancellors and CEOs will be directly responsible for making sure their institutions comply, and they'll have to report every six months to their governing bodies. Compliance won't be a tick-and-flick exercise. It will require regular reporting on incident data and steps being taken to prevent and respond to gender based violence.

Let us recall that the 2017 Human Rights Commission recommended that every university establish advisory committees to address sexual violence. That recommendation was in 2017. Yet, as reporting by the ABC in February last year showed, a third of universities still did not have such committees. And too many fall short on transparency. This bill brings the transparency and oversight necessary—regular annual reporting through the minister and to parliament—and enhances accountability. By driving whole-of-institution cultural and regulatory reform in the higher education system, with over 1.5 million students and 130,000 staff, the bill will also help lead social change.

Another measure from the Action Plan Addressing Gender-based Violence in Higher Education is the introduction of the National Student Ombudsman, who commenced in February this year. The Student Ombudsman enables higher education students to escalate complaints about the actions of their higher education provider, including gender based violence complaints. What I'm most pleased about with this bill is that the code will also include an enforceable requirement that providers implement the recommendations of the National Student Ombudsman. As Minister Clare noted in the other place, this gives the findings and recommendations of the ombudsman real teeth and will make sure they are put in place to improve our universities and other providers.

I will finish with some STOP Campaign submission quotes. Again, these are direct quotes from students. They are quite distressing, but I think it's really important to record why we are having this discussion now. The first quote is from a young student who said:

I experienced assault as a young adolescent. I was so excited to leave my home town and attend university, live on campus and make friends. It was one of the worst experiences of my life … The culture on campus is indisputably unsafe and toxic.

It's pretty damning. Secondly, another student said:

I withdrew socially after I was assaulted, and struggled to scrape through my final year of university. I ended up deferring my Honours and not going back to university … because I couldn't deal with walking around places where I knew I might see my perpetrators, or be reminded of them.

And finally, another said: 'I had panic attacks before class because I knew the perpetrator was in the class with me.' These are statements directly from students. That's why we're here debating this bill now, and it's more than overdue. The students should never have had these experiences. Horrifically, they did. It's incredibly brave that they did speak up. Because of their bravery, we can now take action. I'd like to read a final quote from the campaign submission which simply states:

Please listen to the voices of students and survivors as these are the opinions that matter.

For too long, students have been let down by their universities and by inaction by previous governments. That changes today. Students should be able to learn at universities and live on campus free from harassment or assault. We should do everything we can to reduce harm experienced within university settings. Let's be clear: passing this bill is not the end of the work. It's the foundation. No student should be forced to choose between their education and their safety. It's that simple.

Michelle Ananda-Rajah (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish I was not having to speak on this issue. I long for the day when we, as a parliament—indeed, as a community—do not know the meaning of gender based violence because it's no longer part of our lexicon. But, sadly, that is not the case. That is not the world we live in, even in 2025. Students and staff in any workplace need to feel safe. That is especially so in our educational spaces—in our schools, as well as in our higher education settings. For too long, this problem of gender based violence has really been swept under the carpet.

There has been a testimonial injustice dealt out to the many students who have raised concerns, over at least a decade, with the powers that be in our universities. We all know, but take for granted, that safety is a prerequisite to participation—in any setting, whether it be work or study, or in training centres, sporting teams and so on. But if you do believe, as I do, that education is the most powerful lever we have to climb up that ladder of social mobility, then not addressing gender based violence or any other type of barrier to participation is a denial of this country's wealth. It's denying our country the kind of wealth that it should realise because it holds people back. It holds people back and it results in worse social and educational outcomes ultimately.

We know the statistics around gender based violence—something like one in 12 students in the past 12 months have experienced sexual harassment and one in six since starting university. That's very common. That's highly common. With regards to sexual assault, most extreme type of violence, it is one in 90 in the last 12 months and one in 20 since starting university.

These are almost certainly going to be underreported compared to the reality because most people do not disclose these types of events because the response, frankly, from the universities has been pretty poor. It's been completely substandard. We also know that, in terms of formal complaints made to the university, one in 30 students who were sexually harassed made a formal complaint. That's only three per cent. There is gross underreporting, and it is the same with sexual assault—only 5.6 per cent have reported and made formal complaints to the university. The question must be asked as to why that is so.

In terms of the most prevalent settings within a higher education context, these incidents tend to occur in clubs and societies followed by student accommodation—student accommodation, where people basically try and find sanctuary after a busy day at university or in class, wouldn't have been on my radar—and, of course, then in private homes and residences. It is simply not good enough.

But the statistics belie the real burden, and that's only conveyed through qualitative data. I'll read out a few quotes here. This is from a student who experienced unsolicited sexual advances—common; I certainly experienced it when I was a junior doctor—'Despite clearly mentioning that I was not interested, my colleague approached me. It was an invasion of personal space, and we were in my room preparing for an exam. He tried to kiss me, and I pulled back in shock. He said, "But you were talking so openly about wanting romantic and sexual freedom."' In what universe is that even acceptable? Apparently, this is the norm in our universities.

Then there are, of course, the catcalls. Is there any woman or girl around who has not ever been subjected to catcalls—yelling, whistling, honking of cars and, worst case, stalking, which we know is even more prevalent now thanks to our online virtual worlds. This from a student: 'I was at college event at the bar ordering drinks, and this guy came up to me clearly drunk. He tried to look under my dress. I felt very self-conscious and walked away as fast as I could.' There are many women, girls and young women out there who have experienced this, and we all know what that feels like. You tend to freeze. You are so self-conscious and threatened that you revert to your primal response, which is fight or flight, and if it's flight, it's a sense of paralysis.

Then of course there are the invasive questions, the inappropriate language and the inappropriate jokes. 'Going to university, I dealt with men stalking me online, following my class timetable at uni to know where I was, and I tried to avoid them.' There was one quote that particularly jumped out at me from a student who used the bus at night-time to get about university. As you know, universities instituted these transport services at night in order to actually help students, particularly women, feel safe. But this is what one student disclosed: 'I was asked extremely private, personal and uncomfortable questions about my sex life by a uni bus driver when he used to drive me around the campus late at night.' You're essentially a captive audience in that kind of setting. It's just awful to read.

We also know that there are certain faculties and subjects at university which are male-dominated, and these areas are fraught, particularly for women students. These domains of study desperately need more gender balance in order to drive the kind of cultural change that is essential at university level. But this is what women encounter: 'I am a young woman who has studied in a massively male-dominated field. I often face comments from fellow students and lecturers about my physical appearance, ranging from unnecessary compliments to sexual and degrading comments. At times, when I have rejected the romantic advances from other students, I have been threatened to have my name slandered, which has the potential to greatly harm my academic career. I have also had men engage in intimidating behaviours after my rejection of them. I constantly fear being too nice.' That is the experience of millions of Australian women currently, as well as that of women in the past, and it's really as a nod to them that we are bringing forward this legislation.

As you know, Acting Deputy President O'Sullivan, in February of this year the National Student Ombudsman opened its doors for the first time. This is essentially a watchdog for the university sector. It is a watchdog with teeth. It has all the powers of a royal commission. It's designed to hold universities to account and increase transparency. It also has an educative role. So, if students are not getting the kinds of results that they need to get from universities, they can escalate to the ombudsman on all kinds of matters: discrimination, racism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, gender based violence—you name it. But that's not enough; we have to go further, and that is why we've introduced this legislation.

This legislation will essentially bring forward a more robust framework to address gender based violence in universities, and it builds upon the ombudsman work. It essentially puts the onus on higher education providers to introduce preventive strategies, and it will have a much stronger compliance function with penalties attached. It imposes a positive duty on universities to lift their game. It will have a national code which will set best practice standards, which will be informed by the experts, and it will attempt to address the drivers that lead to this kind of behaviour. It will certainly prioritise prevention. It will hold the boards and the chairs, who are the vice-chancellors, the CEOs, of universities to account, and I think that's really important. If you really want to drive cultural change, you have to start at the top—you have to hold the top dogs accountable—and this is what this legislation will do. It will have an educative function and it will be transparent. It will report to the parliament. There will be regular reporting of incident data in these institutions.

The legislation will also—and I think this is important—establish a specialised unit, focused on gender based violence, in the Department of Education. Again, this unit will be designed to educate but also to enforce, and there will be public reporting, not only in this parliament—I hope to see it on a website, for example, which will be accessible to all Australians, because there's nothing like shining a spotlight on poor behaviour. So it will have a naming and shaming function.

I will conclude by saying that this has been a long time coming, and I pay tribute to the many, many activists and advocates over a long period of time—some, over 10 years—who have worked towards this outcome. It is through your advocacy, your voices, your hard work, blood, sweat and tears, that we have delivered this. I'm proud that it has been a Labor government—which, by the way, is female dominant, 56 per cent women, with cabinet agenda parity—that has listened and is now taking substantive action to address this problem. But, as with all types of cultural problems, it takes time. It's not just frameworks, legislative bodies, agencies and watchdogs that do it. It takes a whole-of-society effort to expunge this kind of behaviour.

Jess Walsh (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Early Childhood Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

These bills provide for the establishment and enforcement of a national higher education code to prevent and respond to gender based violence. They are an important step in making students and staff safer on our campuses. I thank senators across the chamber for their contributions to this debate.

I note the second reading amendment from Senator Duniam. The government takes the issue of antisemitism at universities very seriously. Antisemitism, Islamophobia or any other form of racism, harassment, discrimination or intimidation must not be allowed to threaten the safety of students and staff on Australian university campuses or anywhere else. The Minister for Education has been clear that universities must enforce their codes of conduct and meet their legislative obligations, which include having policies around freedom of speech, fostering a safe environment and ensuring student and staff wellbeing.

Since 1 February this year, the independent National Student Ombudsman has been open for students. The ombudsman is a national first. It is available to handle complaints from students about experiences of antisemitism on university campuses. The ombudsman is required to report to government at the end of each financial year about the nature and number of complaints it has received.

The government is also anticipating the final report from the Race Discrimination Commissioner into racism, including antisemitism, at Australian universities. We have also received the Special Envoy's Plan to Combat Antisemitism from Ms Jillian Segal and will soon receive a report from the Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia in Australia, Aftab Malik. The government will consider these reports carefully and respond accordingly. We want these independent bodies to have a chance to do their work rather than pre-empt any recommendations they might make. The government will not be supporting the second reading amendment as proposed at this time.

We are taking this action now as it forms a key commitment under the Action Plan Addressing Gender-based Violence in Higher Education, following more than a decade of dedicated advocacy on behalf of victims-survivors of sexual assault and sexual harassment on campus. I commend these bills to the chamber.

Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the second reading amendment moved by Senator Duniam be agreed to.