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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-03-17 Daily Xml
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Gendered Violence Prevention

The Hon. C. BONAROS (16:24): I move:

That this council—

1. Acknowledges the thousands of people who attended the March 4 Justice in South Australia on 15 March 2021;

2. Condemns all forms of gendered violence;

3. Calls for an end to gendered violence in all workplaces, including in our parliaments;

4. Calls for the full implementation of all 16 recommendations made in the Equal Opportunity Commission’s Review of Harassment in the South Australian Parliament Workplace;

5. Calls for a review of the way that sexual assault crimes are reported, investigated and prosecuted in South Australia;

6. Calls for fully independent investigations into all cases of gendered violence and timely referrals to appropriate authorities with full public accountability for findings;

7. Calls for the full implementation of the 55 recommendations in the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Respect@Work report of the National Inquiry into Sexual Harassment in Australian Workplaces 2020;

8. Calls upon the state government to increase funding for gendered violence prevention to world’s best practice; and

9. Calls upon the state government to enact gender equality legislation to promote gender equality.

It was a great honour and privilege to march alongside almost 8,000 people at the March 4 Justice event held in Adelaide on Monday. I did so because I knew I would be in very good company amongst schoolchildren, survivors (women and men) and many of my parliamentary colleagues, who have had enough.

I have been to a few rallies over the years but none quite like this. If you ever wanted to be heard, to be understood, to speak to or hear from people who knew how you felt, then this was certainly the place to be on Monday. As I said at the rally, that was not the day to hear from politicians, because I think we as a collective have failed us all for long enough. The rally was the day we heard from a sea of women, many of whom have remained silent for too long, that enough is enough. What we did on Monday was lay the foundations for future generations.

We heard from a number of prominent local women. The event kicked off with a Welcome to Country by proud Kaurna Aboriginal woman Rosemary Wanganeen. We heard from Dr Afsaneh Moradi, who spoke of her own experience of sexual harassment as a newly arrived Iranian doctor in Australia. We heard from barrister and human rights activist Claire O'Connor, who told the crowd:

Every single women woman who is here today is here because she knows and she has experienced the pain and suffering that comes from being treated unfairly. We have had enough. Enough is enough.

We heard from the founder of the SA Aboriginal Action Group, Ms Janette Milera, who focused on gendered violence against Indigenous women. We heard from Ms Abbey Kendall, Director of the Working Women's Centre SA, who spoke of the dire need for a feminist survivor, worker-led, re-education campaign and told all of us, 'If you aren't with us, get out of the way.' We were lucky enough to have musical director and performer Victoria Falconer-Prichard, amongst others, to MC the event and bring it all together.

I think it is really important to note that two weeks ago the organisers of SA's March 4 Justice were going about their ordinary lives, just as the rest of us do, before coming together to organise an event in SA that would coincide with similar events in all jurisdictions, because like many of us they were fed up, they had had enough. In their words, the march showed there is a deep anger in South Australia and nationally about gender inequality, widespread incidents of sexual harassment and gendered violence in our workplaces and society, and they said, 'We will keep fighting until we see real measurable change.'

Before I continue I would like to thank sincerely the coordinators of that committee. I would like to thank Jessica Carr, Dr Samantha Battams, Ms Raelene Linden, Ms Tanysha Bolger and others who I will not name but thank for their extraordinary efforts and extraordinary work. I think we all wish we could hold an event that could get a few hundred people there, let alone 8,000, in a matter of days and have the impact that this event had. This group of women certainly achieved that.

This motion speaks to a petition which I am sure many members are familiar with. It speaks to the terms of that petition in terms of the sorts of actions that we would like to see implemented in South Australia and nationally. It states that we must call:

…for the full implementation of all 16 recommendations made in the Equal Opportunity Commission’s Review of Harassment in the South Australian Parliament Workplace…

I note that that is an ongoing discussion here that we will obviously have a lot to say about. The reality is, we have to review how sexual assault crimes are dealt with in this place. It also calls for a review of how sexual assault crimes are reported, investigated and prosecuted in South Australia.

It calls for full, independent investigation into all cases of gendered violence, timely referrals to appropriate authorities and full public accountability for findings. It calls for the full implementation of the 55 recommendations made in the Australian Human Rights Commission's Respect@Work report of the National Inquiry into Sexual Harassment in Australian Workplaces 2020. It calls for the lifting of public funding for gendered violence prevention to world's best practice. It calls for the enactment of a gender equality act in South Australia to promote gender equality, including a gender equity audit of parliamentary practices. There is a similar call for the same to be done federally.

It calls for no perpetrators as policymakers or lawmakers, who the organisers say should be stood down. It calls for the ratification of the International Labour Organization's convention on Eliminating Violence and Harassment in the World of Work. It calls for an independent review into the prevalence of gendered violence in parliament, to be conducted by the federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner. It calls to strengthen the Sex Discrimination Act so that parliamentarians and judges are no longer excluded from accountability for sexual harassment and discrimination committed in the course of their employment as public officers.

I am really proud that when we dealt with our Equal Opportunity Act here recently, we moved to implement measures that were aimed along very similar lines of ensuring that, to the best of our abilities so far, members of parliament and members of the judiciary will no longer be able to hide behind exemptions that apply under our Equal Opportunity Act.

It calls for the creation of a code of conduct for all MPs that includes the prevention of gendered violence in houses of parliament and associated workplaces. Again, that is something that is being reiterated at the federal level. It calls for mandatory gendered violence and sexual harassment training of all federal MPs and their staff on an annual basis. Again, this is something that we need to be looking at right here in our own backyard.

There is so much that we need to do, and we need to do it urgently. I think none of us are under any illusion that this is going to go away. As I said, the march on Monday certainly laid a foundation for where we expect things to go for real, measurable change to take place. I think we have reached a turning point, a tipping point, whatever you want to call it, where simply carrying on with the same standards of practice is no longer going to be accepted.

There are a number of women who, through this process, have found their voice and who have decided that, after decades, they are not going to remain silent anymore. They expect and should demand that things change for themselves, for their kids and for their grandkids. One thing that I was really touched by on Monday was the number of older women who were at the rally. As we know, there are lots of women who have put up with really bad behaviour in their workplaces and in their everyday lives for a very long time, and they have done so in silence.

Dr Moradi was a perfect example of coming from a background where you are taught as a young child to not talk back to men. You are taught to respect all the men in your life. You are taught not to speak up when things go wrong. You are certainly not encouraged to speak out on issues of sexual harassment. But Dr Moradi found her voice, and through the march she found the courage, for the first time, to speak out about the sexual harassment that she faced as a newcomer to Australia—about coming to a new country as a GP and going to your first job, and one of the first things that you are confronted with is sexual harassment by someone in your workplace.

Given the cultural diversity that she came from, I am sure it was absolutely an extraordinary challenge for her. I think we know now that the more people speak out on these issues the braver we all become and the more likely we all are to speak out about issues that we know are not acceptable—about behaviour that we know is not acceptable, behaviour that we know happens under our noses and that we walk past, because we are taught to put our heads down and keep walking. We are taught not to speak out, and that has a huge ramification not only on us but for younger women coming through the ranks. I am really heartened by the younger women who are coming through the ranks who are saying, 'Well, I'm not going to let the same happen to me.'

As I said, we do have a lot of work to do in this space, and there is certainly more that I would like to say to this motion, which I will not say today. I would urge all those honourable members who are thinking about it, when I do conclude my remarks, to add their voice to this contribution and let all women, and men, know that we stand in solidarity with them and that we support their fight. With those words, I seek leave to conclude my remarks on this most important motion.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.

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