Background and context

Work has been occurring for decades at the frontline, policy and decision-making levels to reduce and ultimately end domestic, family and sexual violence (DFSV). This includes through the current National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032 (National Plan), as well as its predecessor and the recently released Working for Women: A Strategy for Gender Equality.¹ This work is crucial to acknowledge and to honour – particularly for those on the frontline, who continue to respond to growing demand and increased risk and complexity.

The challenge that we have been tackling as a community, however, is a complex and perennial one – a fundamental human rights issue, driven by millennia of gendered and other forms of structural inequality, then compounded by an array of systems, industries and, recently, online forces that push back against our collective progress. In combination this means that, despite our gains, our shared task to prevent violence in all its forms has potentially become more difficult than ever before.

In April 2024, the Prime Minister labelled a rise in homicides of women and children a national crisis.² This rise follows a recent upward trend, despite the decline over the previous three decades.³ Yet even this categorisation as a ‘crisis’ belies the problem’s true scale. In particular, the untold number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women and children who are missing, presumed murdered, remains a source of grief, questions and national shame.

The extent of this challenge calls for us to assess our current approaches and ask what more can be done. This does not mean diverting from what we know must remain a priority. Rather, it means expanding our gaze and hearing what the frontline, lived experience advocates and communities across Australia tell us makes a difference. It means learning from the evidence and a broad range of sectors – and shedding light on areas which may not have been considered through a DFSV or prevention frame. Put simply, it means identifying every opportunity to unlock the ‘prevention potential’.

Rapid Review of Prevention Approaches

The Rapid Review of Prevention Approaches (the Review) announced on 1 May 2024 was given the considerable job of bringing these opportunities into focus. As such, the six members of the multidisciplinary Review Panel – supported by three co-convenors and a Secretariat from the Commonwealth Office for Women – were tasked through broad Terms of Reference to provide independent advice on opportunities to expand and strengthen prevention efforts across all forms of violence against women and children, including a particular focus on preventing homicides.

The Review process was, as its name suggests, a particularly rapid one – in which the Panel and co-convenors met regularly over the course of 12 weeks to discuss and explore priority areas of focus.

As accelerated as this process was, the timeframe recognised the urgency of the challenge and the fact that the Australian community rightly expects governments to take swift, decisive action to end violence against women.

That said, the Review was commissioned to bring additional, short-term momentum to established long-term processes and was therefore guided by the advice of existing governance structures, including the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Council on family, domestic and sexual violence, the First Nations National Plan Steering Committee, the National Plan Advisory Group, the National Women’s Alliances, as well as the Lived Experience Advisory Council supported by the National Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commission (DFSV Commission). These governance groups remain the authorities to which the Review referred, while bringing in additional areas of focus where opportunities arose.

The Review also received targeted briefings on a wide array of areas, ranging from primary prevention, cohort-specific and intersectional considerations, frontline responses, safety by design principles, sources of available data, and existing and emerging evidence regarding a range of systemic factors. In doing so, the Review noted the extent of information already being collected, as well as activity being conducted, at all government levels, while also identifying that considerable gaps and opportunities persist.

Table 1. List of stakeholder groups consulted to inform the Rapid Review of Prevention Approaches.

The Review was also supported by specifically commissioned work, with Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS), the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS), and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) providing advice and a stocktake of evidence relevant to certain areas. Key emerging evidence and specific data was also sourced and made available to inform the Review.

The rapid timeline did not allow for the Review to call for submissions, however the Review did look to the extensive existing evidence collected through recent consultation processes. This included wide-ranging consultations conducted by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advisory Council on family, domestic and sexual violence. The Review also conducted a specific consultation concerning the needs of the Torres Strait region.

This remote area of Australia is too often excluded from consideration, with funding and data related to this region frequently subsumed within wider categorisations, despite it being a distinct region with its own strengths, experiences and barriers to women’s safety.