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