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Media release

NSW Women’s Alliance Launches 2023 State Election Platform, Asks for Real Commitment to Women’s Safety

By 11/08/2022No Comments

The NSW Women’s Alliance have launched their official 2023 election campaign, Action to End Gendered Violence. The launch will be hosted by The Hon. Natalie Ward, Minister for Women’s Safety and the Prevention of Domestic and Sexual Violence, and supported by Shadow Minister Jodie Harrison MP and Ms Abigail Boyd, MLC.

The platform includes seven key areas for reform in NSW, where numbers of domestic violence assaults have increased annually in the past five years and sexual violence has increased by 21% in 2021 alone, making it the fastest growing crime reported in NSW.

The campaign will call upon the NSW Parliament to act by ending gendered violence and creating a safe state for all in NSW, with commitments to:

  1. A coordinated, whole-of-government approach to sexual, domestic, and family violence policy in NSW.
  2. Commit to intersectional primary prevention to end gendered violence and promote gender equality.
  3. Immediate and long-term support for people experiencing and recovering from sexual, domestic, and family violence
  4. Safe and appropriate housing for everybody experiencing and recovering from sexual, domestic, and family violence.
  5. Reform legal systems and policing for people experiencing sexual, domestic, and family violence.
  6. Enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to lead change towards ending sexual, domestic, and family violence in their communities.
  7. Develop and implement a workforce development plan for the specialist sexual, domestic, and family violence sector.

“This election is an opportunity for NSW to put women’s safety as a higher priority,” says Interim CEO of DVNSW, Elise Phillips. “Already, 21 women have been killed this year because of domestic violence, because not enough is being done to prevent it. The NSW Women’s Alliance has seven recommendations aiming to reduce sexual, domestic and family violence, including investments of $20m per year for preventing violence, $133m per year increase for specialist services, and an extension to the consultation period for the coercive control bill.”

“The NSW Women’s Alliance Election Platform calls for important reform of legal systems and policing for people experiencing sexual, domestic and family violence,” says Helen Campbell OAM, Executive Officer at Women’s Legal Service NSW. “This includes a safe, phased, transparent and accountable approach to the further criminalisation of coercive control in NSW. It also includes consistent and safe responses to sexual, domestic and family violence by police and courts, ongoing sexual, domestic and family violence training and support and regular auditing of police responses to sexual, domestic and family violence.”

Yumi Lee, CEO of the Older Women Network NSW, says the campaign represents the wishes of the women of NSW for important, urgent steps to be taken to make this a safer state. “We’re calling on all parties to make a commitment to truly understand that violence against women must stop, and that the time for making statements without real action and substantive long-term funding is over,” she says. “Violence against women impact the full diversity of women and across all ages. It is an outrage that girls through to older women are suffering because the government is not doing enough to provide support, build affordable housing and ensure adequate wraparound services.”

View the full election platform

About the NSW Women’s Alliance

The New South Wales Women’s Alliance is an alliance of peak organisations and state-wide, specialist service providers responding to and working to prevent sexual, domestic and family violence. Our vision is for a world where there is no sexual violence, domestic or family violence. For over a decade, the NSW Women’s Alliance has been advocating for reform and improved policy responses to gendered violence in NSW.

Membership of the NSW Women’s Alliance includes:

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