What I want to see in Australia’s Second Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence
My submission focuses on how we move beyond responding to sexual violence after it occurs and create the conditions that make sexual violence less likely to occur in the first place.
Relationships and sexuality education (RSE) has an important role to play in this. But if we want RSE to genuinely function as a primary prevention strategy, we need to be willing to ask whether what we are currently providing young people is actually enough.
In my submission, I make four recommendations for strengthening Australia's approach to sexual violence prevention.
1. If we want sexuality education to prevent sexual violence, we actually need to talk about sex
Australia has made important progress in recognising consent education as part of sexual violence prevention. But consent cannot carry the entire weight of prevention.
The Australian Curriculum currently gives schools considerable flexibility in what is taught through RSE. Critically, sexual activity itself is not explicitly included within mandatory curriculum content. Topics relating to sexual activity, intimacy and sexual communication can therefore remain optional or avoided altogether.
This creates a contradiction. We increasingly expect RSE to prevent sexual violence, while remaining hesitant to explicitly teach young people about sexual and intimate relationships.
Young people need more than a definition of consent. They need opportunities to learn how to communicate about sex, recognise what healthy sexual experiences and relationships can look and feel like, navigate boundaries, understand sexual safety and seek support when something does not feel right.
They also deserve RSE that does not present sexuality exclusively through risk and harm. Sexuality is a normal part of human development. A strengths-based approach can acknowledge intimacy, communication, pleasure, agency and healthy relationships while also addressing coercion, violence, sexually transmitted infections and other risks.
If we want RSE to function as sexual violence prevention, we have to give young people the knowledge and skills to navigate sexuality itself.
Put simply, not including ‘sex’ in relationships and sexuality education will never lead to sexual violence prevention. Consent education alone will never be good enough.
I have therefore recommended strengthening the Australian Curriculum so comprehensive RSE is explicitly required across year levels, including mandatory learning about sexual activity, intimacy, sexual communication, pleasure and sexual safety. RSE should also continue through Years 11 and 12 – years in which intimate and sexual relationships are increasingly relevant to many young people's lives.
2. We cannot improve RSE without investing in the people expected to teach it
A stronger curriculum is only useful if educators are supported to deliver it. Teachers are routinely asked to navigate incredibly complex subjects through RSE, yet teacher preparation in this area remains inconsistent. Some educators receive specialist training. Others may enter classrooms having received little or no formal preparation for teaching RSE.
Teaching sensitive and sometimes contested content requires more than being handed curriculum materials. Educators need subject knowledge, skills and confidence. They also need institutional support, particularly when teaching topics that may attract resistance or complaints. Access to professional development should not depend on whether an individual school happens to have the money, time or leadership support to prioritise it.
I have therefore recommended national requirements for RSE within initial teacher education, alongside ongoing, government-funded professional learning for the existing teaching workforce. If we are serious about RSE as a prevention strategy, preparing the people who deliver it cannot be optional.
3. External RSE providers need meaningful quality assurance
Schools also increasingly engage external organisations and educators to deliver RSE. Many external providers do excellent work. But there is currently no nationally consistent accreditation system establishing who is qualified to deliver RSE in Australian schools or what minimum standards they should meet.
In many contexts, meeting child-safety requirements such as holding a Working with Children Check may be sufficient, without equivalent requirements relating to RSE expertise or evidence-informed practice. This leaves individual schools with the difficult task of deciding which providers are credible. It also creates space for visibility to become confused with expertise.
I have recommended a low-cost national accreditation and quality assurance framework for external RSE providers, including organisations, educators and lived-experience speakers. This should not create unnecessary barriers for good educators. It should create a clear and transparent baseline for quality.
4. We need to fund research into what makes relationships go right, not only what makes them go wrong
Much of sexual violence research understandably begins with harm. We identify rates of violence, risk factors and negative outcomes, and then develop interventions designed to reduce those harms. That research is essential, but it cannot be the only question we ask.
If primary prevention means stopping sexual violence before it occurs, we also need evidence about the conditions that enable healthy relationships, sexuality and communities to flourish.
What environments support people to recognise and communicate their boundaries? How do people learn what safety, pleasure, care and reciprocity feel like within friendships and relationships? What creates strong community connection and belonging? And what protective factors already exist within communities that policy and prevention initiatives could strengthen rather than attempting to build everything from a deficit? These are also sexual violence prevention questions.
I have recommended dedicated investment in strengths-based prevention research, including longitudinal and community-led research. A strengths-based approach means broadening the prevention lens, not ignoring harm. We need to understand not only what we want to prevent, but what we want to create instead.
Where to from here?
The Second Action Plan is an opportunity to think seriously about what primary prevention requires. For me, that means moving beyond isolated interventions and investing in the systems surrounding them, including (but of course, not limited to) a comprehensive curriculum, educators who are properly prepared and supported, meaningful standards for external providers and a stronger evidence base about the protective factors that help people and communities thrive.
Ending sexual violence will always require effective responses when violence occurs. Victim-survivors need accessible services, justice, safety and support. But a National Plan to end violence must also be ambitious enough to imagine a future in which people do not experience sexual violence in the first place. That requires us to ask more than how we teach young people to avoid harm.