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A new national code for how universities respond to sexual violence and an independent watchdog to investigate student complaints are key planks of a draft federal plan on campus safety put to state education ministers this week.
The proposal for a new student ombudsman and enhanced oversight of student residential halls has yet to be endorsed by state ministers. But after a special meeting with federal Education Minister Jason Clare on Tuesday, they agreed to release it for public consultation.
Education Minister Jason Clare is pushing ahead with university governance reforms, including on student safety.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Sanctions for universities that fail to meet these standards are also on the table, as are increased reporting requirements.
“All students and staff should feel safe on campus and in residential colleges. More need to be done to… support [them] when the worst happens,” Clare told this masthead.
The plan was formulated by the government’s new working group, helmed by Our Watch chief executive Patty Kinnersly, to clean up how universities run.Addressing safety on campus is its first focus, but the group will also examine the at times shadowy, corporatised world of university governing councils – part of priority reforms from Clare’s ongoing Accord review.
In September, a damning Senate inquiry found universities couldn’t be trusted to handle sexual assault cases on campus themselves, and a new taskforce “with strong powers” was needed to police them.
Sharna Bremner, founder of End Rape on Campus Australia, was among experts who helped formulate the plan and brief ministers on Tuesday. She said while there was complicated state legislation to work through, students urgently needed a complaints avenue.
According to the draft plan, a national student ombudsman should have powers to recommend vice-chancellors refund fees or change policies if necessary, but would not have a role in “academic decision-making” within universities.
“This plan has to keep its teeth,” Bremner said.
But, for the first time in about a decade of campaigning for sexual violence reform at universities, she added: “It feels like things really are about to change for a whole generation of kids. Someone’s really listening.”
The sector’s existing watchdog, Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) had repeatedly failed to investigate complaints that universities were mishandling sexual violence incidents, Bremner said, “though we’ve always been told it’s the place to get help.”
The agency recently told parliament it hadn’t formally investigated any of the 39 complaints of sexual violence at universities since 2017. This is despite previously assuring government it would immediately investigate any such complaints, and reporting it was actively investigating “individual cases … where policies may have failed”.
In last month’s Senate estimates hearings, its chief executive Dr Mary Russell said TEQSA was bound by a very particular meaning of the term “investigate” and, while it had assessed some student complaints, it couldn’t examine individual cases. It backed calls for a standalone student ombudsman as a “gap that needs filling”.
A spokesperson for the agency said it was helping the government examine how the new body would operate.
“We acknowledge the term ‘investigations’ has previously been used to describe TEQSA’s compliance activities by a range of parties and we apologise for any misunderstanding this has caused,” the spokesperson said. “We have always, and will continue to, carefully assess and respond to all complaints raised with TEQSA about sexual harm.”
But universities have pushed back against more regulation, saying their record on responding to sexual violence was ahead of other workplaces and institutions.
End Rape on Campus founder Sharna Bremner has been campaigning for reform of universities’ responses to sexual violence.Credit: David Mariuz
Last week, Universities Australia announced all 39 universities had signed onto a new voluntary charter of best practice in responding to sexual violence, calling on other sectors to join them.
Bremner said: “It was almost a cut and paste of the same promises universities made in 2017 right after” the Human Rights Commission released its first landmark survey of sexual violence on campuses.
“There’s been pockets of university staff doing good work, but not enough,” she said. “Lately, we’re even seeing a trend of some universities making students put in FOI requests to see the outcome of their own complaints.”
As of July, most universities weren’t publishing promised data on incidents of sexual violence and their responses.
Stories of complainants who were discouraged from reporting or were re-traumatised by the experience at universities were also heard by the Senate inquiry, where it emerged that Universities Australia never developed the consent awareness campaign for which it got $1.5 million in government funding.
As well as “strong intervention” at universities, the inquiry recommended a review of TEQSA, which it found had “continually failed to exercise the full breadth of its powers to hold universities accountable for their woeful responses”.
“TEQSA won’t even name unis with complaints made against them any more,” said Bremner.
If you or anyone you know needs support, you can contact the National Sexual Assault, Domestic and Family Violence Counselling Service on 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732), Lifeline 131 114, or Beyond Blue 1300 224 636.
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