Recommendations

To continue and strengthen the focus on primary prevention of gendered violence, particularly all forms of violence experienced by women and children in the forthcoming Second Action Plan of the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032, this submission makes the following recommendations.

Recommendation 1

Maintain a clear focus on gender inequality as the primary driver of gendered violence while recognising the intersecting forms of discrimination and inequality that shape the prevalence and experience of violence across different communities. This should include:

1. Ensuring primary prevention activities funded through the National Plan are grounded in Australia’s evidence base on the gendered drivers of violence and are gender transformative in their design and implementation
2. Applying an intersectional approach that recognises how gender inequality interacts with factors such as racism, ableism, age, sexuality and socioeconomic inequality to shape experiences of violence, safety and respect
3. Maintaining a clear distinction between the gendered drivers of violence and the reinforcing factors that can increase harm, to ensure each receives appropriate policy attention and investment, consistent with Australia’s primary prevention evidence
4. Supporting a whole-of-government approach that advances gender equality through complementary reforms across health, education, employment, housing, justice, digital and social policy.

Recommendation 2

Increase investment in primary prevention under the Second Action Plan. This should include:

1. A significant uplift in Commonwealth and state and territory investment to a level commensurate with the scale and impact of gendered violence
2. Establish a nationally consistent approach to defining, mapping and reporting on investment in primary prevention to support decision-making, transparency, accountability and future planning
3. Commissioning and publishing updated national estimates of the social and economic costs of violence against women and children to strengthen the evidence base for future policy and investment decisions.

Recommendation 3

Recognise primary prevention and early intervention as distinct but complementary and essential approaches to addressing gendered violence under the National Plan, ensuring activities under each pillar are appropriately designed, resourced, implemented and evaluated. This should include:

1. Clearly articulating the distinct purposes, evidence-bases and intended outcomes of primary prevention and early intervention within the Second Action Plan
2. Maintaining separate but aligned policy, funding implementation and evaluation frameworks that recognise the different objectives, target populations, workforces, professional skillsets and measures for success under each pillar
3. Supporting coordinated implementation across the family and sexual violence continuum, ensuring primary prevention and early intervention reinforce one another through strong referral pathways and partnerships without conflating their roles
4. Investing in implementation guidance and capability building to support governments and practitioners to apply these approaches consistently and with fidelity to the evidence base
5. Promoting coordinated planning across Commonwealth, state and territory governments so that primary prevention and early intervention investment activity are mutually reinforcing.

Recommendation 4

Embed a comprehensive, evidence-based life course perspective across all pillars of the Second Action Plan to ensure prevention, early intervention, response and recovery and healing activities are identified, prioritised and coordinated across key developmental stages and activated across systems and settings with greatest potential for impact.

Recommendation 5

Sustain and strengthen evidence-based primary prevention under the Second Action Plan. This should include:

1. Continuing and growing investment and implementation support for established evidence-based prevention initiatives across the Commonwealth, states and territories.
2. Sustaining and protecting the national, state and local infrastructure required to support evidence translation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation and continuous improvement
3. Continuing targeted investment in emerging prevention priorities, innovation and research to ensure primary prevention efforts remain responsive to changing evidence, technologies and patterns of violence.

Recommendation 6

Sustain, grow and scale new and existing community-led and place-based prevention initiatives, including ‘saturation’ pilots. This should include:

1. Investment, implementation and evaluation timeframes being guided by the latest place-based primary prevention and early intervention evidence alongside community needs to support continuous learning, adaptation and long-term impact  
2. Strengthening state, regional and local wrap-around support services, systems and prevention infrastructure required to support community-led organisations and effective implementation of place-based approaches
3. Learning from the development and implementation of the Respect Ballarat project and the South Australian models and building the workforce and system readiness required to pilot similar initiatives across Australian states and territories.

Recommendation 7

Strengthen alignment between the National Plan and the First Nations Family Safety Plan by including:

1. Dedicated actions and enablers under both plans that support collaborative governance, reciprocal knowledge sharing, evidence generation, workforce development and monitoring and evaluation
2. A commitment to adequate, long-term and flexible funding for First Nations-led prevention under the Second Action Plan (in addition to Our Voices)  
3. Dedicated actions and responsibilities for mainstream family violence services and prevention organisations under the Our Voices implementation approach to ensure the mainstream family violence system is culturally safe and accessible for First Nations women and children and to support and enable whole-of-population primary prevention efforts that target social norms, attitudes, systems and behaviours within the mainstream community that drive and enable violence against First Nations women and children.  

Recommendation 8

Strengthen national action to prevent gendered violence across childhood and adolescence through a coordinated approach that:

1. Sustains funding and support for whole-of-school implementation, quality assurance and workforce capability for Respectful Relationships Education across all jurisdictions
2. Expands funding for evidence-based prevention across the systems shaping children’s lives including early childhood education, community sport, primary healthcare, youth mental health, parenting supports and child and family services
3. Strengthens children and young people’s capacity to safely participate in digital environments through complementary primary prevention and harm reduction initiatives alongside regulation, such as rolling out online media literacy programs that specifically equip children to critique and challenge harmful gender stereotypes and violence-supportive content
4. Invests in specialist early intervention workforce capacity for children and young people who use violence or display harmful sexual behaviours.

Recommendation 9

Implementation of the Commonwealth Government’s commitment to developing a coordinated national approach to engaging men and boys in preventing gendered violence must be:

1. Grounded in Australia’s primary prevention evidence and gender-transformative practice, with funding, commissioning and evaluation mechanisms that do not reinforce or condone the drivers of violence, and align with National Plan’s objectives
2. Co-designed and implemented through partnerships between experts in primary prevention, men’s health, research, education, men’s behaviour change experts and other relevant disciplines, recognising that engaging men and boys effectively requires multidisciplinary expertise  
3. Developed in conjunction with related Commonwealth and jurisdictional reforms, including the National Men’s Health Strategy 2020-2030 recognising the complementary opportunities to improve men’s wellbeing and preventing gendered violence
4. Closely integrated with the Attorney-General Department’s work to address the risks of online misogyny and gender-based violent extremism, recognising their shared foundations in the harmful gender norms, stereotypes, attitudes and behaviours addressed through targeted and population-level primary prevention approaches.    

Recommendation 10

Strengthen national action to prevent technology-facilitated gender-based violence through a multi-pronged approach that combines primary prevention, industry accountability and regulation. This should include:

1. Dedicated investment across Commonwealth, state and territory governments to prevent technology-facilitated gender-based violence commensurate with the scale, impact and complexity of ongoing harm
2. Strengthening coordination across related Commonwealth initiatives, including the national approach to engaging men and boys in violence prevention, online safety reforms and the Attorney General’s work to address the risks of online misogyny and gender-based violent extremism, recognising the mutually reinforcing potential of these initiatives to prevent technology-facilitated gender-based violence
3. Ensuring Australia’s first National Media Literacy Strategy embeds action to prevent technology-facilitated gender-based violence, reduce harm and interrupt the influence of online misogyny and other radicalising content related to gendered violence through strengthening digital consent literacy and the skills required to critically evaluate and challenge misinformation, disinformation and other harmful content
4. Supporting and resourcing partnerships between the technology sector, researchers, primary prevention experts and family violence sector organisations to develop evidence-informed responses to emerging harms

Recommendation 11

Strengthen national leadership and action to prevent violence affecting LGBTQIA+ people and communities through:

1. Resourcing implementation of Changing with Pride: A National Framework to Prevent Violence Against LGBTIQA+ People (forthcoming), supported by sustained investment in LGBTIQA+-led organisations  
2. Expanding dedicated primary prevention interventions that target the shared and distinct drivers of violence against LGBTIQA+ people, including trans and gender diverse people
3. Supporting primary prevention partnerships between LGBTIQA+ communities and organisations and the family violence, women’s and men’s health sectors  
4. Creating stronger linkages across the Second Action Plan and the National Action Plan for the Health and Wellbeing of LGBTQIA+ People 2025-2035 to support nationally coordinated implementation of action across the full prevention continuum from primary prevention to early intervention, response, and recovery.  

Recommendation 12

Strengthen national leadership and investment in the prevention of sexual violence by:

1. Sustained and adequate investment in evidence-informed prevention across the life course, including comprehensive respectful relationships and sexuality education that reflects the diversity of Australian communities and addresses affirmative consent, healthy sexuality, pornography and harmful online behaviours in developmentally appropriate ways
2. Strengthening the confidence and capability of parents and caregivers, educators and youth workers with tools and resources to support young people’s healthy sexual development and improve critical media literacy
3. Investing in research, evidence generation and evaluation to improve our understanding of the specific drivers of sexual violence and the effectiveness of targeted prevention approaches for different population groups.
4. Providing sustained investment to build the capacity of the specialist sexual violence sector to deliver primary prevention and early intervention, including interventions that address harmful sexual behaviours in children and young people.

Recommendation 13

Strengthen Australia’s national, state and territory primary prevention infrastructure to support coordinated, high-quality implementation of the National Plan. This should include:

1. Sustained and longer-term investment in the leadership, organisations and implementation support needed to deliver primary prevention at scale, including specialist prevention agencies at the national, state and territory and local government level, place-based initiatives and community-led organisations, with mechanisms to support long term, sustainable and collaborative funding models that align with the evidence on what is required to achieve population-level change
2. Stronger national governance, coordination and accountability mechanisms that provide clear oversight of implementation, draw on specialist primary prevention expertise, improve alignment across Commonwealth, state and territory and local governments, and monitor progress towards shared national primary prevention outcomes  
3. Formal mechanisms for cross-jurisdictional knowledge exchange and implementation support enabling governments, researchers, specialist prevention organisations and community-led organisations to share evidence, implementation lessons and innovative approaches.
4. Investment in national and state and territory-based data, evidence and knowledge infrastructure, including improved data collection, funding transparency, evidence generation, evaluation and knowledge translation.  
5. Developing and implementing a National Primary Prevention Workforce Strategy that strengthens workforce planning, capability, career pathways and professional development, while recognising connected workforce needs across early intervention, response and recovery and healing.  
6. A coordinated approach to monitoring, evaluation, and learning that ensures prevention initiatives are rigorously evaluated, that population-wide medium and long term progress measures are appropriately tracked and that successful approaches are embedded, sustained and expanded.  

Recommendation 14

Systematically map, coordinate and strengthen the primary prevention contribution of broader Commonwealth reforms across gender equality, health, inclusion, housing, employment, education and digital policy, including Working for Women: A Strategy for Gender Equality and the National Men’s Health Strategy 2020-2030, to ensure these reforms actively support the prevention of gendered violence and the objectives of the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022-2032.

Recommendation 15

Position prevention as a shared responsibility across Federal government portfolios and identify Federal levers and opportunities to address the drivers and reinforcers of violence through systems and settings across the life course. This should include examining opportunities to address systems abuse, building on the work the Commonwealth Government has already done as part of the Rapid Review.