I was targeted, stalked, isolated, groomed, and repeatedly raped as a minor ...
Child sexual abuse is the epitome of evil. It is also disturbingly common. Perpetrated not by monsters on the fringes of society, but by everyday citizens, hiding in plain sight.
One in six boys and one in four girls is abused before their 18th birthday. We tend to think of child sexual abuse in terms of physical acts but in reality it is mostly invisible, characterised by calculated, insidious, systematic psychological manipulation that leaves its survivors with lasting internalised complex trauma.
Trauma that is not only reinforced by negative social attitudes, but also, ironically, by the very systems and institutions, the structures designed to protect us, to bring justice – like the courts, like the press.
Such is the vicious cycle, or rather, tangled web, of abuse culture, and thus we see the effects of abuse persist long after abuse itself stops, and wherever they can, abuses will turn its survivors and their supporters against each other.
One of the key objectives of perpetrators and their defenders is to maintain control of the narrative by denying, twisting or completely rewriting the truth. As a result, survivors remain trapped in a seemingly inescapable estate of repeated self-justification. By design, those who are already exhausted and traumatised to become exponentially so.
Taking more power in the process. Our pain is their strength. But by the same token, our strength is their pain. The higher we rise, the hideout they try to regain control. Why, just the other day, someone online called me a horrible, horrible person who aggressively pursued her teacher and then blamed everyone else.
Former Australian of the Year Grace Tame is up now.
Katharine Murphy reports that the most senior women in the government are directly in front of Higgins as she launches into the deficiencies of the national plan (below). They’re right in her eyeline.
Higgins gets a standing ovation, then resumes her seat. “She breathes in for five and out for five,” Murphy says.
And what will be the true test of whether the government is committed to creating system change – task forces are great. Codes of conduct are important. But only if it’s paired with institutional change.
There are 28 recommendations in the Jenkins review and, without their implementation, we will continue to see this toxic culture exist within our most powerful institution ...
Without these changes, women will inadvertently continue to be discouraged from taking up rolls within parliament, or take a seat at the leadership table. If we truly want a gender-inclusive society, we need more vocal women in rooms where key decisions are being made to ensure that there is a gender lens placed over national policy. This starts with the implementation of the Jenkins review. The question is, if this moment doesn’t spark change in our parliament, what will?
... That brings me to the National Action Plan. The release of the draft national plan to end violence against women and children has been hotly anticipated. More than a decade after it historic launch, rates of violence [remain] far too high. In fact, they’ve barely changed since the launch of the plan and, in some cases, they’ve actually increased. This lack of action at the national level has seen the states go it alone.
Victoria had the first royal commission into family violence, spurred on by the bravery of another former Australian of the Year, Rosie Batty. For women over the age of 15, 1 in 4 have experienced intimate partner violence. 1 in 2 women have experienced sexual harassment in their lifetime. I bet you’ve heard those statistics rattled off at White Ribbon breakfasts and at the top of ministerial statements for a decade. I know I have.
But recognising these horrific facts is no longer sufficient. Women with disability across Australia experience significantly higher levels of all forms of violence. For example, 9 out of 10 women with an intellectual disability report experiencing sexual assault. And Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are 32 times more likely to be hospitalised, and 11 times more likely to die due to assault. Any single one of these statistics should challenge us. They should confront us. They should spur us to do whatever it takes.
But instead, they’ve become sort of this throat-clearing exercise that we all just kind of tolerate. A mumbled pro forma before we get into the same old talk about how slow and difficult change is. To its credit, the national plan doesn’t aim low. Unfortunately, its aims are so lofty and vague that it’s impossible to disagree with and equally difficult to examine. The plan talks about a future free from violence against women and their children, claiming that it will serve as a blueprint for change that sets out our collective ambitions, priorities and targets for how we will work to end violence against women and children over the next 10 years. It claims to integrate all we have learnt since 2010. These aspirational statements are, indeed, ambitious, and equal to the scale of the challenge.
But the question is - how will they be achieved? That is, unfortunately, where the draft plan has lost its way. Instead, it is largely a collection of statistics describing the problem, filled with warm sentiments and platitudes attached to noble outcomes which lacks the promised learnings from the past decade towards a future free from violence against women and children, and clear targets to that end. Without clearer action and firm targets, there can be no accountability.
Without accountability, we are back to a world where we are describing the problem being seen as sufficient. The draft plan does not even directly acknowledge the fact that we’ve failed on our first account. Our one single measure for success – a target to see a significant and sustained reduction in violence against women and their children during the next 12 years – we failed. How can you speak on drawing on everything you have learned without confessing the failure of the one test we have set ourselves?
Instead, we have monitored acknowledgements that rates of domestic violence have remained stable and rates of sexual violence have increased. In response, the planet laments wistfully that more needs to be done, but if it is more of the same compounded by a refusal to examine the past failures, let alone examine them, then this plan will not be worth the glossy paper it will eventually be printed on and Australian women and children will suffer through another decade of violence and abuse while politicians and policymakers ring their hands about the fact that we need to turn things around in 2040.
As I think you have gathered by now, my patience has run out. I want to close by saying that for all the fear and anger and sadness that my time in politics has brought me, it did not take away my belief in Australia, my faith in democracy. I know our country can do better for women and girls. I know our parliament will be a better, stronger place if more women are ministers and members and senators and staffers.
I know change is possible, and as long as there are people like Grace Tame and Rosie Batty ... I know that change is coming. It is up to us to keep those in power up to account. To take up the challenge, we each have a responsibility to one another and have a role to play in making things better for the next generation of women.
Higgins is talking about the need for action, for change, and for justice:
The women and girls of Australia deserve so much better than an improvement in the way that we publicly discuss the dangers that they face at home and in their daily lives.
Put another way, last year wasn’t a march for acknowledgement. It wasn’t a march for coverage. It wasn’t a march for language. It was a march for justice. And that justice demands real change in our laws, as well as in our language, in our national culture, as well as our national conversation.
That starts with the prime minister – yes, some of his language last year was shocking and, at times, admittedly, a bit offensive. But his words wouldn’t matter if his actions had measured up.
Then, or since. I didn’t want his sympathy as a father. I wanted him to use his power as prime minister.
The crowd erupted into applause at this point. Higgins continued:
I wanted him to wield the weight of his office and drive change in the party and our parliament, and out into the country. And one year later, I don’t care if the government has improved the way that they talk about these issues.
I’m not interested in words anymore. I want to see action. Late last year, we saw the final report from the Jenkins review, commissioned by Australia’s sex discrimination commissioner, who very kindly is here today. It revealed what many of us in this room already know to be true. Sexual harassment and bullying is rife in the corridors of power, with over 51% of participants reporting incidents of this nature.
I earnestly thank the prime minister and the leader of the opposition for their statements of acknowledgement and apologies offered yesterday to victims of abuse in our national parliament. In addition, I’d like to acknowledge Zali Steggall, who enabled a handful of us to actually attend in person.
It was encouraging, and an important sentiment, but I am cognisant that, at this point in time, they are still only words.
Higgins is saying platitudes and weasel words are not enough:
Nearly a year after the March4Justice made its way to the threshold of federal parliament, too little has changed. If you go back and read articles from March 15, there was a sense of a national moment of reckoning. A feeling of unstoppable momentum. An irresistible force. A raging current that would not be turned aside by tired old platitudes from fathers of daughters.
But I stand here today fearful that this moment of transformative potential, the bravery of all those women who spoke up and stood up and said “Enough is enough” is in danger of being minimised to a flare-up, a blip on the radar, a month-long wonder in the national conversation.
Or, worse, just a political perception problem neutralised and turned into a net positive. Even beyond that, I’m worried what too many people beyond the government and the media took out of the events of last year was that we need to be better at talking about the problem.
In a lot of cases, that seems to have meant trading off offensive, tone-deaf statements for a convoluted mix of appeasing weasel-words. In the national conversation, we have this passive, anonymous language vaguely talking about “wrongs done” as if sexual violence falls out of the sky. As if it is perpetrated by no-one. As if it is inflicted on no-one. For a start, recognising there’s a problem is 50 years short of what’s required.
Katharine Murphy is down at the National Press Club, and says the atmosphere is “electric”. Liberal MPs Marise Payne, Anne Ruston, Jane Hume and Simon Birmingham are there, as is former MP Julia Banks. Labor leader Anthony Albanese is also in the room to hear Brittany Higgins and Grace Tame.
I made my decision to speak out because the alternative was to be part of the culture of silence inside Parliament House.
I spoke out because I wanted the next generation of staffers to work in a better place. To take up a dream job like I did. And for it to live up to their hopes and not betray them. And above all, I decided to speak out because I hoped it would make it easier for other women to speak out too.
It’s become my whole life mantra right through the past 12 months – to make it easier for other women to speak.
So while I’m very grateful to take the chance to talk at the National Press Club, I want to stress that I don’t pretend to speak for all survivors. Not for a minute do I imagine that I could. Everyone’s trauma is personal.
I never wanted to be a spokesperson or a standard-bearer, but I do know that it’s easier to share your story if you recognise something of it in someone else’s. And above all, I believe it will be easier for women to share their story if they see it makes a difference in the workplace, in our national life, and in our parliament. That’s what keeps me speaking out – my determination to drive change.
This could be confronting or triggering for some people. If you need help, call the National Sexual Assault, Family & Domestic Violence Counselling Line on 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) or visit www.1800RESPECT.org.au.
Brittany Higgins addresses the National Press Club
The National Press Club is just kicking off now. Apparently there was a bit of a palaver earlier, when a woman at the front of the room was knocked over in the initial rush of photographers. But she’s upright now. And Brittany Higgins is about to start speaking – she has been greeted with rapturous applause.
Until the recent Omicron surge in cases, overall mortality in Australia has been lower than previous years, as the increase in deaths from Covid-19 has been more than offset by the reduction in deaths from other respiratory illnesses.
But the recent surge in Covid-19 cases has changed this. According to modelling released by the Actuaries Institute,the high cases and number of deaths is expected to result in a 10% increase in the total number of deaths, from all causes, in Australia during January 2022.
In January 2022, official Covid-19 deaths in Australia totalled 1,582. There were 909 official Covid-19 deaths in 2020 and a further 1,344 deaths in 2021.
Convenor of the Actuaries Institute’s Covid-19 working group, Jennifer Lang,said the model measures actual deaths against predicted deaths, adjusted as the population ages and grows, and allows for trends in mortality improvement. She said:
In general, our model shows expected deaths are increasing faster from demographic changes than they are reducing because of improvements to mortality.
For the month of January 2022, if there had been no pandemic, we would have expected around 13,500 to 14,000 deaths. However, the surge in Covid-19 deaths without any corresponding reduction in other deaths means that in January 2022 we expect to see excess mortality of around 10% once the complete death data is available.
