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Prominent Aussie women unite to launch powerful campaign demanding safety, respect and equity

By Bronte Gossling|

A team of powerful Australian women have come together to launch Safety. Respect. Equity, a campaign asking leaders for exactly that after a year of speaking about the need for meaningful change regarding the safety and treatment of women.

Grace Tame, Brittany Higgins and Chanel Contos have joined a force of a dozen prominent Aussie women, including Christine Holgate, Lucy Turnbull, Wendy McCarthy, Paralympian Madison de Rozario, youth activist Yasmin Poole, former Coalition MP Julia Banks, journalist and advocate for families and early childhood Georgie Dent, union leader Michele O'Neil and Indigenous advocate and academic Larissa Behrendt, to issue a letter and video to the Australian public ahead of the federal election and International Women's Day, demanding an end to injustice and inequality.

"Australia, we need to talk," former Australian of the Year Tame said in the campaign's launch video, which asks for nine steps addressing gender inequality in Australia to be undertaken.

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Grace Tane, Brittany Higgins, Lucy Turnbull, Christine Holgate, Wendy McCarthy, Madison de Rozario, Yasmin Poole, Chanel Contos, Julia Banks, Michele O'Neil, Larissa Behrendt and Georgie Dent, Safety. Equity, Respect.
A group of prominent Australian women, including Grace Tame and Brittany Higgins, have joined forces for the Safety. Respect. Equity campaign. (Twitter)

The group is asking for all 55 of the recommendations from Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins' Respect@Work report, which aim to end workplace harassment, to be implemented, as well as more consistent and robust child sexual assault laws and action on the Wiyi Yani U Thangani report, the national plan for First Nations girls and women.

Effective employment programs for women with disability, 10 days of paid domestic violence and family leave and legislation on expanded paid parental leave, the closing of the gender pay gap, and accessible, free and quality childcare are also among the asks, as well as respectful relationships education to be implemented in workplaces, homes and universities as well as schools.

Speaking on The Today Show this morning about the campaign, Dent said, "2021 really exposed the extent to which women remain unsafe in workplaces, in schools, and inside Parliament House, and the reality is that there are solutions to this."

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"We can close the gap between men and women, we can make life better for women in this country, but what it requires is a commitment to reform," Dent continued.

"We can do it but what we need is leadership, and what this group of women have come together to say is, 'We are working together across party lines, across ages, across occupations and political beliefs, to say let's come together in demanding an Australia in which all women and children are safe and free to realise their potential.'"

The campaign comes off the back of Tame and Higgins' joint National Press Club address, during which Higgins said that in the year following her coming forward with her rape allegation, too little had changed.

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In the video, Tame said it was time for leaders "to get to work, stop the abuse of power and bring about real change" after a year of too many reports, reviews and talk-fests.

In Australia, one in five women have been sexually assaulted or raped, with two in five experiencing sexual harassment in the workplace.

These statistics, which Poole said are confronting and disturbing, are worse for First Nations women and women of colour, as well as those who are part of the LGBT+ community or live with a disability.

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Yesterday, it was announced that the Federal Government will invest a further $189 million over five years to "strengthen prevention and early intervention efforts in family, domestic and sexual violence."

Part of this package includes $48 million on a campaign that will focus on "the attitudes and expectations of some men which can condone or excuse violence," as well as $5 million on a national survey for secondary school-age students regarding issues surrounding consent to inform the syllabus implementation of respectful relationships in the federal curriculum next year.

The $5 million is in addition to a wider $8.51 million allocated to Contos' organisation Teach Us Consent, which will be working in conjunction with Our Watch to produce consent and respectful relationships resources for children and youth aged 11 to 16, to be used in the corporate sector, sporting organisations, youth and family services, and by parents and the wider community.

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