Page 713 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 31 March 2021
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
protesting for an improved system for women in the workforce prompted especially by the experiences of Brittany Higgins.
I have worked in the federal parliament, as have many Canberra residents. That time was both positive and negative, some of which I have referred to in speeches in this chamber earlier in my tenure here as an MLA. Some of what I saw annoyed me. Some of it shocked me. And yet I learned a lot in my time there.
I can empathise with Brittany that her opportunity to work in the office of a federal member—in fact, a minister in her case—was a great career opportunity. Having worked in and had meetings in those offices in the federal parliament, I can picture exactly the situation she must have been in, how distressed she must have been by the assault that was done to her, as it slowly seeped into her mind and heart and she started to retrace the steps of what had occurred.
I returned to a job in the federal parliament after leaving another one in a rather unhappy way. I remember that my return to the building was hard for me—and I had not been raped. I had been very angry about my treatment when I left. I imagine that returning day after day to the building in which the assault had occurred, seeing couches like the ones she saw, must have been difficult and traumatising and reminded her of all the thoughts she had around those events.
When I listened to her speak at the March 4 Justice rally at Parliament House and re-watched the interview she had done with Lisa Wilkinson, I realised that her accused attacker being able to move on and get another job, and possibly not being charged with the crime, was one matter that affected her very much. It is no wonder that the idea that she was so heavily impacted by his actions but thought that his life had not been particularly heavily impacted must have stuck in her mind as an absolute injustice.
We know that in her case she did not involve the police at first, and what the statistics tell us is that this is by far the most normal thing for a survivor of sexual assault to do. We know that nine out of 10 survivors do not involve the police. She said in her interview that it was still dawning on her 48 hours after the attack that she had in fact been raped.
I started looking into our responsibility, being the local government in the ACT, and I was asking myself how our system could be better for situations like hers: to be empowered to take legal action, even if some time after the events, and have a fair chance of a conviction in cases like this. I have come to realise that it is absolutely imperative to get forensic samples, swabs of sexual organs and the mouth immediately. This is so that correct and uncompromised samples are correctly taken, stored and analysed so that they can form a part of the evidence in a case in the future, in our justice system.
Justice for victims of sexual assault may not be able to occur instantly, but without this evidence it is my understanding that convictions are very difficult and victims, survivors, go on suffering while their perpetrators walk away and go on, often, to assault further people and inflict additional harm. Actions like those of her accused
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video