Sharna Bremner Over to you Anthony Albanese
I hope you read this thread to try and grasp the true extent of the problem, but I highly doubt it will get past one of your 11 media advisers.

Made choices to fund submarines over safety. Made choices to outsource the work they should be responsible for. Made choices to ignore the experts in the field. Remember this when you vote. Remember it every damn time you fill out that ballot paper. It's a choice.

I don't know if people realise just how much work to support victim-survivors is done by unpaid, unqualified people. Friends, family & orgs just like mine. Or how much violence prevention work is done by unpaid, unqualified people, too. Because govs have made choices.

End Rape on Campus Australia Elections are coming. Vote. Vote like your life, or the life of someone you love, depends on it. Because it just might.

End Rape on Campus Australia Demand better for victim-survivors. Demand nothing more than full funding, expert-led, data-driven programming & long-term investments in services, prevention & research. Don't accept unfunded, unqualified orgs like mine being forced to step up

End Rape on Campus Australia Don't let them shirk their responsibility by claiming we're all responsible. Don't let them kick the can down the road by claiming it will take a decade to reduce prevalence rates via education. They can do more & they can do it now. They're choosing not to.

End Rape on Campus Australia We hear over & over that ending gendered violence is everyone's responsibility. That's a cop out, whether it's said by a uni vice chancellor or the prime minister. 'Everyone's responsibility' means nobody is responsible, least of all them

End Rape on Campus Australia It's unacceptable that student victim-survivors have had to turn to End Rape on Campus Australia to get support. It's unacceptable that we had to support them. And it's unacceptable that it's a story that's repeated across orgs around the country

End Rape on Campus Australia Victim-survivors across Australia, whether they've been impacted by sexual, physical or emotional violence, are too often being supported by unqualified, unpaid people who are doing what little they can to help. Because politicians made choices.

End Rape on Campus Australia But it's all we have, because while there's always enough funding for war toys, there's never enough for gender-based violence. And that's a choice, made by the people who run our states & territories & the Commonwealth. It's a choice.

End Rape on Campus Australia Our training came 'on the job'. We've made mistakes as we've learned on the go, mistakes that have compounded harm. We've been unsupportive because we're unsupported. We're not qualified. We're just doing our best & sometimes that's not enough

End Rape on Campus Australia I'm not saying this to get praise, I'm saying it because there are so many other orgs just like mine, all over the country. Unfunded, unqualified, doing what they can to help victim-survivors of violence, because funded orgs simply can't keep up. And that's a huge problem

End Rape on Campus Australia The funded services can't always advocate for improvements in government responses & increased funding, either because agreements gag them, or because they're worried they'll lose what little resources they have. So, again, that's where we step up

End Rape on Campus Australia And that's why we keep going. The funded services, such as counselling services, run on the smell of an oily rag. They simply don't have the resources to help everyone & they can't always provide the practical support that victim-survivors need. So we step up.

End Rape on Campus Australia We don't have the funding to pay for the insurance we need to have ongoing volunteers or to provide the vicarious trauma support volunteers deserve. Burnout & vicarious trauma are ever-present, but so is the need for our services

End Rape on Campus Australia We've lobbied for reform at campus, state & federal levels. We've made submissions, provided advice & produced reports. It's been gruelling & exhausting. Most of our original team no longer does the work & for a lot of the last few years, it's mostly been me, on my own.

End Rape on Campus Australia We've helped hundreds of student victim-survivors to file reports, apply for academic accommodations, seek legal support, access counselling & medical care, find new housing & a million other little things so that they can continue to stay enrolled in their studies

End Rape on Campus Australia Some of us had experience working in the higher ed or sexual violence response spaces. None of us had formal qualifications in counselling, social work etc. Our work has been unpaid, as we're unfunded, often costing us money & always done around paid employment &/or study

My org, End Rape on Campus Australia, provides direct support to people who have been impacted by sexual assault or harassment within higher ed in Australia. We formed a little over 8 years ago as a group of women who saw huge gaps in support for students impacted by sexual violence

I am one of countless people who runs an unfunded, grassroots organisation that provides frontline support to people who have been impacted by gender-based violence in Australia. Let's talk about why that's bad

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