AWAVA recommends that, in working to end violence against women, all parties:

  1. Commit to co-designing policies and programs with the women’s services sector and community-led organisations

  • Work with peaks, AWAVA and other representative bodies who are experts in the field
  • Test proposals in conversation with the sector before deciding on them
  • Avoid poorly-designed and ineffective programs by listening to community-led organisations
  • Make sure programs are informed by victims/survivors’ experiences

 

  1. Invest funds at levels that are appropriate to the scale of the issue

  • Respond proportionately to the prevalence of violence against women, its devastating impacts and costs to the community, which are largely borne by victims/survivors
  • Provide funding certainty to services, especially those assisting particularly marginalised women
  • Prioritise specialist women’s services – these are best-placed to support women and children facing violence

 

  1. Create a holistic Fourth Action Plan and a second National Plan that set out steps in a logical framework

  • Bring together all levels of government and non-government actors to plan effectively
  • Plan in a way that enables progress to be tracked and monitored
  • Continue to invest in primary prevention

 

  1. Commit to taking an intersectional approach

  • Recognise the diversity of women subjected to violence
  • Understand that violence is complex and cannot be told by just one story
  • Draw on the different strengths that can be mobilised by people within their communities to prevent violence and support victims/survivors.

 

  1. Work intensively to address key gaps and problems

  • Fix migration, Centrelink and housing rules so that women on temporary visas facing family violence can find safety
  • Expand the services that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children need to be safe
  • Make housing affordable so that women and their children have realistic options for building lives free of violence
  • Reform the family law system so that it puts safety first