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ANGE:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ange McCormack. This is 7am.

Who would axe a campaign to promote consent on university campuses?

We know that sexual assault of students is an enormous problem, and a national campaign designed by experts is exactly the kind of thing you’d expect to be part of the solution.

Except if you’re one of the university Vice-Chancellors who put a stop to it.

Today, journalist and contributor to The Saturday Paper Kristine Ziwica, reveals why a vocal minority killed a new push to make universities safer, to the surprise of experts involved.

It’s Wednesday, July 26.

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ANGE:

So, Kristine, for years you've been covering sexual assault and harassment of students at universities in Australia. Can you tell me a bit about the scale of this problem? What's the story of sexual violence on campuses today?

KRISTINE:

So students and women's safety advocates have been crying out for really, really long time now, for immediate and substantive action to be taken. The issue of sexual violence on university campuses… It first rose to the national agenda in about 2017, with the publication of the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Change The Course report.

Archival tape – Kate Jenkins:

“The report marks a huge milestone. For decades, university students and advocates, and survivors of sexual harassment and sexual asssault, have argued for change.”

Archival tape – Protest:

“Break the silence, end sexual violence.”

Archival tape – News reporter 1:

“Over 160 students have come to Canberra today to demand that the parliament take seriously the issue of sexual assault on campus. For too long, students who have been sexually assaulted on campus have been ignored, their experiences have been minimised, or they just haven’t been believed.”

KRISTINE:

And the report found that one in ten female university students said that they'd been sexually assaulted in the past two years, and only 4% of students believed that their universities were doing enough to provide assault support. A follow up survey from Universities Australia, it's called the National Student Safety Survey, was carried out in 2021, and it found that 275 students were being sexually assaulted within a university context every single week.

ANGE:

Wow.

KRISTINE:

That equates to 14,300 sexual assaults per year.

ANGE:

And of course, advocates have been working on addressing this problem, which, as you say, is a really big one, for a long time. So what's happened since 2017, when that Change The Course report came out?

KRISTINE:

Yeah, sadly, it's now six years later and not that much has changed on the ground. And advocates and experts who I've been speaking to for this piece, including those who really study, or have studied, university responses to sexual violence, they're just deeply, deeply unimpressed.

One of the recommendations from the Change The Course report was for universities to be more transparent about rates of sexual harm on their campus, and all of the 39 universities that are part of Australia's university peak body agreed to that recommendation. But three quarters are failing to meet that obligation.

Archival tape – News reporter 2:

“An open letter from more than 40 organisations has called on the government to urgently address the alarming incidents of sexual assault at universities. The most recent information finds…”

KRISTINE:

So, End Rape on Campus and Fair Agenda, who’ve been campaigning on this issues since well before 2017, they published, two weeks ago, an open letter, and it was signed by 40 groups and individuals, calling for an independent oversight body. And they want that body to be led by experts in sexual violence, and they want it to provide guidance and, most importantly, a means to hold universities to account, to encourage transparency, including sanctions when universities fail to comply.

Archival tape – Sharna Bremner:

“We've been calling for a national task force to address sexual violence in universities for about the last five, six years now.”

KRISTINE:

I spoke to Sharna Bremner about that. She's the founder of End Rape on Campus, and she says that after the MeToo movement kicked off in 2017, the then coalition government came very, very close to establishing such a body.

Archival tape – Sharna Bremner:

“We were so close to having a national task force to address this issue, and we had terms of reference that were in place. And my understanding was that Minister Birmingham, at the time, had actually created the structure of the task force. He had proposed members of the task force.

Then there was the leadership spill, which saw Malcolm Turnbull replaced by Scott Morrison, who shifted Simon Birmingham to a different portfolio, and parachuted Dan Tehan into the education portfolio. And that was the end of that.

That office was not interested in dealing with us anymore.”

ANGE:

It sounds like there's been this long, drawn out and, ultimately, unsuccessful process to get this independent advisory body on sexual violence at uni’s established. But surely, in the past six years, the universities has been doing something to tackle this problem of sexual violence on campus?

KRISTINE:

Well, yes, they have. The sector's peak body, Universities Australia, they will say that they've rolled out hundreds of initiatives to tackle sexual violence on university campus. And they have. But there hasn't been a lot of transparency about whether or not they're working. So in 2021, the Morrison government added another initiative to that list. The Morrison government funded Universities Australia, to the tune of $1.5 million, to roll out a student facing Respectful Relationships campaign. And it was something that advocates had been crying out for, for a really, really a long time. But then the campaign was shelved.

Which came as a really big surprise to those, including Sharna Bremner, who were recruited to an independent advisory group to help shape that campaign.

Archival tape – Sharna Bremner:

“It's incredibly disappointing to see a program that was going to reach students across the country be scrapped, because we don't actually, currently, have consistent approaches to prevention education across the university sector, in the same way that we do at schools and now in workplaces, where a whole suite of prevention education is taking place. Universities are just existing in a black hole, in terms of that kind of work. So to see this scrapped is actually really upsetting.”

KRISTINE:

And since the campaign was axed, I've been trying to get to the bottom of why? Why was it ditched? And what I found out was shocking, and really indicative of a much bigger problem.

ANGE:

We’ll be back after this.

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ANGE:

Kristine, we’re talking about this Respectful Relationships education campaign, which was scrapped by Universities Australia. Can you tell me why that happened? Why did they drop it?

KRISTINE:

So, that's when things got rather interesting.

Campus Review, which is a University News publication, asked Universities Australia that question earlier this year, and a spokesperson for Universities Australia told Campus Review that it agreed to shelve the campaign after quote unquote, research indicated that a broad campaign, quote, would unlikely have the cut through required to be effective in shifting behaviours and attitudes. So I asked Universities Australia about the research, and they declined to share it with me. And then I went to the Department of Social Services. Now, they have oversight of the funding agreement, the government funding agreement with Universities Australia, about this research. And a spokesperson said to me that they, quote, did not have access to the research cited by Universities Australia.

Archival tape– Larissa Waters:

“Okay, just in relation to why there was such a shift…”

KRISTINE:

And it also came up at Senate Estimates in May.

Archival tape– Larissa Waters:

“Like why? What was the cause of that change of scope?”

Archival tape – Greta Doherty:

“So that was in response to feedback…”

KRISTINE:

Greta Doherty, from the Department of Social Services, was asked by Senator Larissa Waters why the campaign had been shelved, and Doherty gave a similar response. She said that it had gotten feedback, or that they had gotten feedback, through what she described as the initial advisory mechanism, that a broad campaign wasn't the best way to reach students.

Archival tape – Greta Doherty:

“Acknowledging that students' experiences are very much localised to the campus where they attend. And so that's why the decision was made to move it from…”

KRISTINE:

Now, what I've since learned tells a very different story.

Sources have told me that the campaign came to a halt at some point last year, when it was presented to Vice-Chancellors. Some Vice-Chancellors objected to, what I would very reluctantly describe as, the explicit nature of the campaign. And I say explicit in the sense that it dealt with sex frankly. A minority of them felt that it was too risque. Now, obviously, this calls into question whether there is research, as Universities Australia has claimed, that informed the decision to shelve the campaign. It also calls into question the accuracy of the statements given at Senate estimates, by a DSS official, who said that the decision was informed by this initial advisory mechanism, as she called it. Now, when I asked DSS about the accuracy of the statement made by Doherty, in light of this information, at estimates, that it was informed by this initial advisory group, a spokesperson just said to me that DSS had no further comment. Now, Sharna Bremner of End Rape on Campus, was on that initial reference group or advisory mechanism, call it what you want. And she told me that she was not consulted about the decision to shelve the campaign, and she was just cut out of all communications.

Archival tape – Sharna Bremner:

“So I stopped receiving updates about what was happening with this program, and had to send multiple emails to the people that were involved in the project, and just wasn't getting any answers. So at the beginning of this year, I sent further emails and again, got no reply. So I eventually just went straight to the top and emailed the Chief Executive Officer to say, what is going on here? And that's when I got a reply from somebody completely different, that I had never spoken to before, telling me that the program had been scrapped. And until that point, I had no idea.”

ANGE:

Right. So Kristine, the Universities seem to be saying publicly that they didn’t think the campaign would be effective. What do we know about what was actually in it?

KRISTINE:

So the campaign materials took as a given that many university students were likely to be sexually active, and that there was a real need to normalise positive, respectful behaviour. And the plan, according to sources with knowledge of the campaign, who I spoke to, was to meet students on their terms. And the idea was, let's just act like the adults that we are. Market research was conducted to better understand the attitudes and beliefs, that lead to sexual violence on campuses. They commissioned a creative agency to develop the campaign. Iterations of the campaign were even tested on target audiences, to make sure that they had, what they call in the advertising business, cut through. And according to my sources, nothing was put forward that wasn't underpinned by market research, or that didn't have the confidence of the creative agency and the independent reference group of experts, or that hadn't been successfully tested with target audiences.

ANGE:

Right, so some of the Vice-Chancellors thought that the campaign was too risque, not appropriate. And I wonder if this goes to a broader cultural trend in Australia of not knowing how to talk, or wanting to talk frankly, about consent and sex. What does this story, from the university level, tell us about how Australia deals with issues around consent?

KRISTINE:

I'd say that firstly, the fact that we are having this conversation about university students, adults, is pretty, to me, pretty gobsmacking. And we know the research tells us that young people need frank, direct information about relationships and sex. Now, Katrina Marson, she wrote a whole book about this, it's called Legitimate Sexpectations, and she's talked about this as being a public health issue.

Archival tape – Katrina Marson:

“We know that it acts protectively, that it safeguards wellbeing, that it protects against sexual violence, that it delays first sexual experience. It even improves academic performance. So we ought to have the courage of our convictions…”

KRISTINE:

Not giving it to kids is harmful. Giving it to kids is protective. It's just that simple. But it's also usually a vocal minority who tend to block this kind of work, when in actual fact, the vast majority of parents actually support their kids getting this kind of information. So the episode also, to me, seems to have echoes of the infamous Milkshakes debacle. And I think if I just say that, many people's minds more than go back to it.

ANGE:

We all remember it.

KRISTINE:

We all remember it, they'll know exactly what I'm talking about.

Archival tape – Video 1:

“To cross into the action zone, those people must agree.

Do you want to try my milkshake?

Yes, I do."

KRISTINE:

And that sought to talk to young people about consent, without actually talking about sex.

Archival tape – Video 2:

"You do, huh? Well, drink it. Drink it all.

What are you doing?

Drink it all.

This is what we call moving the line.”

KRISTINE:

So the whole thing just really highlights the strong resistance respectful relationships education, consent and sexuality education can incur when you have a really vocal minority, And how they can derail those efforts, and block it.

ANGE:

Yeah, and this vocal minority of Vice-Chancellors, whoever they are among the 39, have objected to this campaign that had years of work put into it. I mean, what does this tell you about the influence that a powerful minority can have in preventing progress, on a really serious issue?

KRISTINE:

I think, unfortunately, I think we've realised, or we are realising now, that we just keep seeing this time and time again. So just last week, a vocal minority successfully campaigned to get Big W to stop carrying Yumi Stynes' new book for young people, called Welcome to Sex, in their stores. So there's a pattern. And it really shows the power of this vocal minority to frustrate and block these really necessary efforts to speak to young people frankly, about sex.

And I think, we really need to think deeply, as a society, particularly as policy makers and those tasked with creating change, if we're going to allow that to continue to happen. Or are we going to defend this work, push back and explain why it's appropriate and really, really necessary.

ANGE:

Kristine, thanks so much for your time today.

KRISTINE:

Thanks for having me.

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ANGE:

Also in the news today…

The Australian Electoral Commission revealed yesterday that the number of Australians enrolled to vote has hit a record high.

It’s now up to 97.5 per cent, which is up almost half a per cent since the end of 2022.

And,

The winner of the 2023 Miles Franklin award has been announced.

Shankari Chandran took out the $60,000 award for her novel, Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens.

In an interview with Schwartz Media’s new podcast Read This, Shankari told Michael Williams the win comes after she decided to give up on her publishing dreams.

Archival tape – Shankari Chandran:

“I’m so excited. I’m just… I can’t quite believe it, to be honest. I did consider that I might be in the world's longest and best dream, and that my mind could be so powerful that my publisher, my agent, and my husband were also brought into this dream to share it with me. It turns out, it’s real.”

ANGE:

You can hear the full conversation with Shankari Chandran on tomorrow’s episode of Read This.

I’m Ange McCormack, this is 7am. We’ll be back tomorrow.

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