Australia’s National Cabinet met on Wednesday, August 26, with the goal of addressing gender-based violence, following a fortnight of intense headlines and renewed public pressure.
The most significant outcome was the announcement of a National Family and Domestic Violence Risk Assessment Framework. This system aims to create a consistent method for identifying people at risk of violence across the country.
The framework is designed so that whether a person seeks help from the police, a GP, or a hospital in any state, warning signs should be recognised and acted upon in the same way. States and territories have two years to align with the new framework.
Ministerial councils were also asked to progress several other priorities. These include strengthening respectful relationships education in schools, finalising national standards for men’s behaviour change programs, and improving access to emergency accommodation. Another priority involves developing standards for supporting children who have experienced or been exposed to violence, alongside progressing recommendations from the Senate inquiry into missing and murdered First Nations women and children.
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The government highlighted existing funding and measures underway, including the $3.9 billion National Access to Justice Partnership. They also noted more than $700 million in matched funding for domestic, family and sexual violence services, along with $308 million for emergency and transitional housing.
National Cabinet agreed on the priorities for the Second Action Plan under the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022–2032, which is currently being developed. The priorities for this plan include helping victim-survivors leave violence safely, intervening earlier, supporting children and young people, responding to rising sexual violence, tackling online harms, and holding perpetrators to account.
Disagreement over the pace of change
While the government described the meeting as an acceleration of efforts to prevent violence, critics have questioned the immediacy of the announced measures.
Independent MP Zali Steggall called the outcome “weak and unacceptable,” arguing that the measures were piecemeal and would not make an immediate material difference to women and children experiencing violence.
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Steggall has also called for a national education campaign, particularly as concerns grow around the influence of violent and degrading pornography on young people. Women and children need real action to keep them safe. I will keep pushing for it.
Advocate Tarang Chawla similarly cautioned against confusing existing investments and future processes with urgent action. He argued that governments already know many of the factors driving gendered violence and where systems are failing, and said the focus now needs to be on implementing solutions at the scale and speed the crisis demands.
“We should not confuse a list of existing investments and future processes with urgent action taken today,” Chawla wrote on Instagram. He pointed to the fact that much of the funding cited by the government had been previously announced, while the national risk-assessment framework was itself first announced in 2024 and will not be implemented until at least 2028.
He has also called for a coordinated national approach to challenging the environments that shape attitudes towards women. As he put it, that work needs to reach “the online spaces shaping boys’ ideas about women, power, and sex.”
