Pressure mounts on government to hold universities to account
Universities are failing to meet key recommendations set out by the human rights commission to support students who are victims of sexual violence. There's growing pressure on the Federal Government to step in and set up a taskforce, to hold universities accountable for not properly dealing with sexual assault on campuses.
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00:00 Well, the Ministers Working Group that Jason Clare has announced in the Parliament this
00:05 morning is going to be made up of Ministers of Education from the state and territory
00:09 governments around the country.
00:11 It's also going to include an expert on sexual violence prevention, specifically to advise
00:15 them on what exactly to do about this problem at universities.
00:18 We know, according to the latest data from the National Student Safety Survey, that every
00:22 single week 275 students are assaulted in university settings.
00:27 They're staggering numbers.
00:29 And Jason Clare this morning said that universities haven't been doing enough on this issue.
00:33 We've also been hearing from advocates and students themselves who are pushing the government
00:37 to do more.
00:38 And it's actually been six years this week since the release of the Change the Course
00:42 report, which really canvassed the scale of this problem.
00:45 But still, according to the National Student Safety Survey that was undertaken in 2021,
00:50 20% of students still don't know where to report incidents of sexual violence to their
00:55 universities.
00:56 And 20% still think that they won't necessarily have those disclosures and reports kept private
01:00 if they do make them.
01:02 Really major problems that were also laid out in the Change the Course report.
01:06 Here's what Jason Clare had to say about this issue earlier today.
01:10 The actions universities have taken to address this to date have not been good enough.
01:17 We have the research.
01:19 We have the evidence.
01:20 We know the scope of the problem.
01:22 We have to act.
01:23 As part of establishing this working group on university governance, I've asked my department
01:29 to nominate an expert on prevention and response to sexual harassment and sexual violence.
01:35 They will be part of the working group that will provide advice to me and other education
01:39 ministers on the actions we should take and the measures we should implement to improve
01:44 student and staff safety on campus, including in the variety of student accommodation settings.
01:51 >> Claudia, what do students make of this?
01:55 >> They're welcoming this as a good first step, but they're calling on the government
01:58 to establish a task force to hold universities accountable on sexual violence.
02:03 What that task force would be is independent, for one thing, from the universities, and
02:07 potentially have the power to impose consequences on universities that don't measure up to basic
02:12 standards on keeping students safe, for one thing, from sexual violence, but also supporting
02:16 victims on campus as well.
02:18 It's something that not only students from the Stop campaign have been calling for, but
02:22 also students from the National Union of Students, along with a number of other groups like End
02:26 Rape on Campus, have called on the Albanese government to establish as soon as they can
02:30 while National Cabinet is working together to combat these issues.
02:35 Crossbenchers have joined that call from the Greens, along with a whole bunch of Teal independents
02:40 as well.
02:41 David Pocock in the ACT, Dr Monique Ryan and Zoe Daniel in Victoria, along with Sophie
02:45 Scomps and Allegra Spender, as well as a number of other Teal independents.
02:50 So clearly political pressure is really growing on the government to establish this task force.
02:54 And in the lead up to the 2019 election, that was actually their policy.
02:57 But they haven't said whether or not they'll still establish one now that they're actually
03:00 in government.
03:01 And we heard from one of the students who was here to speak to Minister Jason Clare
03:05 yesterday, Nerea Olive.
03:07 She's with the Stop campaign.
03:09 As a student living in an on-campus residence at my university, I can tell you firsthand
03:15 that institutional betrayal is real.
03:18 Victim survivors are often silenced, stripped of autonomy.
03:22 We are faced with the fear of running into our perpetrators on campus on a daily basis.
03:27 We are faced with continuing to live in the same hall of residence as them, even after
03:32 we choose to report them.
03:34 But this should not be the case.
03:36 We deserve to feel and to be safe in the place that we call home.
03:43 That's Nerea Olive there, and we're expecting Minister Jason Clare to have more to say about
03:46 this working group next week.
03:48 [BLANK_AUDIO]