Introduction

At the time of writing this submission, thirty-seven women and seventeen children have been killed because of alleged murder, manslaughter and neglect in Australia in 2026, according to the Australian Femicide Watch project (1). Murdered women represent the most visible and devastating manifestation of gendered violence but every year, thousands of other Australian women and children are subjected to the trauma of physical, sexual, psychological and financial abuse and coercive control, predominantly from men (2). Recognising violence against women and children as a national crisis is essential but ending it requires urgent action and significantly greater investment to recognise the immense scale of the problem across the family violence continuum, particularly primary prevention.

Australia has reached a critical point in our efforts to end domestic, family and sexual violence (hereafter called ‘gendered violence’). The Second Action Plan marks the transition from seeding activity and establishing strong foundations to a new phase of strategically funding, scaling, embedding and connecting work across the nation if the government wants to end gendered violence in one generation.

Respect Victoria welcomes the opportunity to contribute to the development of the Second Action Plan under the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022 - 2032 (the ‘National Plan’).  We commend the Commonwealth Government’s continued commitment to ending violence against women and children, including National Cabinet’s decision to maintain violence against women and children as one of its six national priority areas (3).  

This commitment must now be matched by strong national leadership, coordinated action across governments at every level and investment commensurate with the magnitude of harm. Crucially, if we truly want to achieve the generational change needed to end gendered violence, the Second Action Plan must include dedicated, evidence-based and appropriately resourced actions directed to both primary prevention and early intervention as discrete yet complementary and essential fields of work.

Gendered violence remains endemic in Australia.  

The burden of violence continues to impact people unequally across our community. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women experience disproportionately high rates of gendered violence, exacerbated by racism, structural inequality and the ongoing impacts of colonisation (5). People with disability, culturally and racially marginalised people, people from LGBTQIA+ communities and people living in regional and remote communities also experience intersecting forms of discrimination and structural disadvantage that increase their vulnerability to violence and create additional barriers to safety, justice and support. Gendered violence contributes to poorer physical and mental health outcomes, homelessness, intergenerational trauma, disruptions to education and employment and reduced workforce participation (6). Collectively these impacts create significant costs to governments, public and private sector and the broader Australian economy which are outlined in part 1 of this submission.  

Despite primary prevention being the only sustainable way to reduce gendered violence over time, it continues to receive only a small proportion of total family violence investment (7). While demand for specialist family and sexual violence services remain critical, the Second Action Plan should rebalance investment across the family violence continuum by substantially increasing long-term funding for primary prevention alongside urgent resourcing for response, early intervention, behaviour change, recovery and healing.  

The enduring prevalence of gendered violence is occurring alongside profound social change. Australians are increasingly living their lives online while rising economic insecurity, social isolation, declining trust in institutions and global backlash against gender equality are reshaping the social conditions in which gendered violence occurs, entrenching the harmful social norms, attitudes, systems and behaviours that drive violence against women and children. These global and domestic forces all coalesce to make primary prevention of gendered violence more challenging and more urgent. Online misogyny and manosphere content are increasingly shaping the beliefs, identities and behaviours of young men and boys, reinforcing harmful gender norms, fuelling disrespect towards women, and presenting a new frontier for violence prevention that requires sustained investment, innovation and cross-sector collaboration. While community understanding of diverse forms of violence has improved over time, support for gender equality among some cohorts has declined – pointing to the crucial importance of continuing to invest, sustain and scale effective primary prevention and early intervention across Australia (8).  

Primary prevention seeks to build the social conditions in which everyone can feel safe, respected and live free from violence. When supported by sustained investment and strong infrastructure, primary prevention stops violence before it starts through shifting harmful attitudes, norms, behaviours and systems, providing the foundations for safe and inclusive communities. These outcomes are fundamental not only to preventing gendered violence, but also to building a more resilient society capable of responding to the complex social challenges of the future.

Given this, the National Plan’s success will ultimately be determined not only by the reforms it delivers, but by how effectively they are implemented across Australian communities. Primary prevention is deeply relational work that relies on trusted partnerships, local leadership and sustained engagement across the settings where people live, learn, work and socialise. National leadership, sustained investment and the structures needed to support primary prevention at scale provide the foundation for this work. There is growing recognition that primary prevention has the greatest opportunity to create safer and more inclusive communities when these foundations are combined with community-led and place-based approaches that adapt to local contexts and are relevant to and owned by different communities while maintaining strong fidelity to the evidence base (9).  

Overview of our submission

As Victoria’s dedicated agency for the primary prevention of family violence and violence against women, Respect Victoria brings a prevention systems lens to the development of the Second Action Plan.  

The recommendations and advice that follow outline practical actions to strengthen implementation of the Second Action Plan and accelerate progress toward ending gendered violence in one generation. They draw on Respect Victoria’s statutory role as Australia’s only state-based agency dedicated to the prevention of family violence and all forms of violence against women, as well as implementation experience and findings from our 2025 Three Year Report to Parliament, Maintain the Momentum.  

In Part 1, our submission outlines core principles that should inform the design and implementation of the Second Action Plan. These include maintaining a strong focus on gender inequality as the primary driver of gendered violence, adopting a life course approach as an organising framework for action, and recognising the distinct but complementary roles of primary prevention and early intervention as part of the entire continuum of addressing gendered violence.

In Part 2, we set out specific recommendations for strengthening prevention across a number of priority areas in the Second Action Plan, including engaging men and boys in violence prevention, preventing technology-facilitated abuse, expanding dedicated action to prevent violence affecting LGBTQIA+ communities and supporting children and young people.  

In Part 3, we consider the broader national primary prevention system and the essential enablers for success of the Second Action Plan. We make recommendations to strengthen Australia’s national primary prevention system, including opportunities to fund prevention more effectively and support stronger coordination, evidence-building, evaluation and workforce development. The role of place-based, community-led prevention approaches are also explored in this section.  

Finally, Part 4 focuses on opportunities for the Commonwealth Government to better embed primary prevention of gendered violence across its policies, functions and reform agendas to maximise impact through a genuine whole-of-government approach.  

This submission should be considered alongside the significant body of work already underway in parallel to the National Plan, including through Our Ways – Strong Ways – Our Voices: National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Plan to End Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence 2026–2036, work to address misogyny and gender-based violent extremism and broader reforms to address child sexual abuse occurring outside domestic and family violence contexts. While these initiatives have distinct purposes, strong alignment between the Second Action Plan and these streams of work will maximise their collective impact, ensure reform coherence and support a more coordinated national approach to preventing gendered violence across the Australian community

Respect Victoria looks forward to working with the Commonwealth, state, territory and local governments, the family violence sector, community-led organisations, victim-survivor advocates, researchers and communities across Australia to develop the Second Action Plan and support its successful implementation.