Action plan to tackle sexual violence at universities to be finalised
1 in 3 universities still hasn't done it and 275 students are sexually assaulted in university settings every week. The revelations come the day before Education Ministers from across the country come together to finalise an action plan to tackle sexual violence at universities.
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00:00 That 275 figure is, we think, probably an undercount of how many students are actually
00:06 being assaulted within a university setting across the country, because the survey was
00:10 conducted when most students weren't on campus due to COVID lockdowns. But what we do know
00:15 is that of those 275, the vast majority won't report to their university because they either
00:20 don't know how or because they don't trust the processes.
00:25 And this lack of action by universities in setting up, not setting up committees or task
00:31 forces, do you see that as a sign that they're not taking the issue seriously enough?
00:37 We definitely see that as a key sign that they're not taking it very seriously. That
00:40 was a key recommendation of that 2017 report that all the universities actually agreed
00:45 to back in 2017. And to see that so few of them have followed through with that and that
00:50 nobody's actually been keeping on top of them to make sure they were doing what they promised
00:53 to do is just emblematic of, I think, the entire sector as a whole.
00:58 And having this sort of piecemeal approach, university to university, I imagine that that
01:02 presents an issue of unequal access too, right? So a student who might have a certain experience
01:07 on one campus might not get the same level of support or access to information as a student
01:12 who has a similar experience on another campus. I mean, how big a problem is that?
01:17 That's one of the biggest problems that we continue to see is just the lack of consistency
01:21 across the sector. It should never be a postcode lottery for any student that needs support
01:26 following a sexual assault. And unfortunately, the situation that we do have is that some
01:30 students will get great care, some students will get absolutely none. And as a result,
01:33 they'll probably drop out of their degree.
01:35 Yeah, and that's quite an extreme sort of result that obviously should be avoided if
01:41 possible. I wanted to ask you about this issue of reporting on data, because, I mean, obviously
01:46 from a PR perspective, sexual assault statistics are not something that universities would
01:52 be over the moon about revealing publicly. So what are the rules around reporting it
01:57 and how many universities are actually doing it well?
02:01 Right now, there are no rules about reporting it. Universities are not required to report
02:06 their data, despite their peak body, Universities Australia, last year releasing a charter that
02:11 did suggest that universities should do that. Too few of them are doing it. And so students
02:16 don't actually know the reality of what's happening on their campuses. And that makes
02:19 them reluctant to report to the university itself. And we know that universities do actually
02:24 view this as a PR problem and not a problem of student welfare. And we've tried to make
02:30 them understand that having no reports is actually a really bad thing, because if students
02:34 are reporting to you, it means that they trust in your processes and they feel safe coming
02:37 forward.
02:38 Okay, and taking all this into account, I mean, how important is the discussion that's
02:42 going to happen tomorrow? How important is it to have this national action plan?
02:47 Tomorrow is monumental. It's a huge conversation and the biggest conversation that's taken
02:51 place on this issue in the 10 years that we've been working on it. And the more than 50 years
02:56 that students have been advocating for this kind of reform. We are incredibly hopeful
03:01 that the ministers will agree and that the action plan will go forward because it will
03:05 create really a game changing change that we need to see for students.
03:11 And did your organisation, were you able to have input into it? Have you been consulted
03:16 in the lead up to this?
03:17 We were. So my organisation and a range of others who have been working on this issue
03:21 for a really long time were part of the Department of Education stakeholder reference group.
03:26 And we were just blown away by how we were listened to and how we were heard on this,
03:30 which has just been truly phenomenal.
03:32 [BLANK_AUDIO]