Tens of thousands of people have marched across Australian capital cities and regional towns calling for determined action to end gendered and sexual violence.
Advocates say the crisis was not properly addressed during the federal election campaign, with funding pledges “barely even hitting the sides”.
The No More: National Rally Against Violence saw protesters gather in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, Hobart and in many regional centres.
Founder of support organisation What Were You Wearing, Sarah Williams, called for more preventive action.
“We need to be able to stop it before it starts,” she told a two-thousand-strong crowd on the steps of Parliament House in Melbourne on Saturday.
“We need more funding for primary prevention, more trauma-informed response training for police, increased crisis housing, bail law reform and uniform consent laws,” she later told AAP.
Similar rallies were held simultaneously in every state capital as well as several regional cities and towns.
Hundreds met in Sydney’s Hyde Park while the regional centres of Newcastle and Wollongong saw a similar turnout, including the family and friends of Mackenzie Anderson, a young mother who was stabbed 78 times and brutally murdered by her former partner in 2022.
Hundreds more rallied in Brisbane, carrying signs reading “We weren’t asking for it” and “Weak laws cost lives.”
In the lead-up to the rallies, organisers urged more men to attend and take accountability for violence against women.
“Men listen to men … we need more male role models out there,” Ms Williams said.
Consent and healthy relationship education should be expanded to more schools with additional funding, and sporting clubs and major codes could also play a role in reaching different generations, she said.
Since 1 January last year, 128 women have been killed, according to the Australian Femicide Watch website.
Its founder Sherele Moody read aloud the names of the women as images of their faces were laid before Melbourne’s Parliament steps.
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“We’re here because men keep killing us,” she said.
“Violence against women is primarily a male problem … it’s not a women’s problem to solve but it’s women who are the ones who do the work.”
Advocates say a government-run national domestic violence register is desperately needed to track the issue.
The rallies also called for fully funded frontline domestic violence services, expanded crisis accommodation and increased funding for primary prevention programs.
Mandatory trauma-informed training for all first responders should also be rolled out, organisers said.
The re-elected Labor government previously promised to prevent domestic violence perpetrators from abusing tax and superannuation systems. It has also pledged to invest more funding to stop high-risk perpetrators through electronic monitoring.
But Moody said ministers and leaders needed to sit down with frontline services to figure out what works.
“All the safety nets have holes in them and the funding barely even hits the sides,” she said.
