Across Australia, women’s and girls’ mental health is being shaped by male violence, the erosion of female‑only services, and the continued absence of robust sex‑disaggregated data. Tasmania is no exception.
Tasmania’s Department of Health is developing the next mental health strategy, ‘Rethink and Beyond’, and invited submissions from stakeholders and community members. For AAWAA and our member organisations, this has provided a chance to insist that any serious mental health strategy must take women and girls’ sex‑based realities seriously, and to make the case that sex‑based women’s organisations belong at the decision‑making table.
The choices made in this strategy will not only affect Tasmanian women; they will also signal whether governments are prepared to confront these structural conditions honestly. Our response was designed with that in mind.
A coordinated suite of submissions, not one‑offs
Instead of one generic submission from ‘the women’s sector’, we lodged five linked submissions: from WAAT (Tasmania), QWAA (Queensland), NSWWAA (NSW) and WAWAA (Western Australia) and AAWAA (national).
All five had a clear spine in common. Each argued that the strategy must name women and girls as a priority population, not treat us as a generic sub‑group. Each highlighted male violence, the loss of female‑only services and the lack of sex‑disaggregated data as central structural problems that drive women’s and girls’ distress. And each challenged sex‑neutral framings that talk about ‘people’ and ‘communities’ while erasing who is doing the harming and who is being harmed.
The differences were deliberate. WAAT’s submission centred Tasmanian realities: local data on partner‑related suicide, perinatal gaps and the state of women’s mental health care in the Mary Hutchinson Women’s Prison. AAWAA’s submission provided the national and UN human‑rights framework, tying Tasmania’s obligations to WHO/OHCHR guidance and to CEDAW, CRC and ICESCR, with an annex of recent stakeholder engagements. QWAA, NSWWAA and WAWAA brought cross‑jurisdictional lessons from Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia, showing that the same structural harms appear in different systems and that good practice is possible.
Together, the five submissions formed a coordinated intervention: different voices, shared analysis.
Skilling up women to write strong submissions
Behind those documents sat another piece of work: a short, focused workshop series to skill women up in submission writing.
In the weeks before the deadline, AAWAA ran online sessions for members involved with WAAT, QWAA, NSWWAA and WAWAA. We looked at how to read a discussion paper critically, how to identify the ‘pressure points’ where women’s experience needs to reshape the frame, and how to turn testimony about abuse, neglect and service failure into structural analysis that policymakers cannot ignore. We worked through practical questions: how much evidence to include, how to use citations without getting bogged down, and how to pitch recommendations so they are both principled and realistic.
The aim was to build a deeper pool of women who feel confident to respond to consultations in health, justice, housing and beyond. Every time we do that, our collective capacity grows.
Choosing document format – and asserting standing
All five submissions were deliberately lodged as stand‑alone documents, rather than simply typing into the online feedback form, and each included a short note explaining why.
We needed space for structured argument and evidence. WAAT’s submission had to walk through Tasmanian data and service settings in a way that cannot be condensed into a few text boxes. AAWAA’s was designed as a reference text and national framework, weaving together international human‑rights obligations, national policy trends and the common priorities identified by our member organisations. QWAA, NSWWAA and WAWAA each needed room to set out how similar issues have played out in their jurisdictions, and what Tasmania can learn from that experience.
Each submission also made its own case for standing. WAAT underscored its role as the Tasmanian women’s advocacy organisation, representing women and girls in this state on the basis of sex. AAWAA explained that our members include Tasmanian women and that, as a national affiliation, we have contributed to mental‑health and human‑rights processes nationally and at UN level. The Queensland, NSW and WA groups positioned themselves as ‘critical friends’, offering lessons from their own law and policy fights.
This is part of claiming our place as serious stakeholders. Governments are used to peak bodies, professional colleges and commissions presenting fully argued, referenced submissions. Sex‑based women’s organisations should be treated with the same respect.
From submissions to seats at the table
Across all five documents, we threaded a shared, strategic ask: that WAAT, as the Tasmanian member organisation, and AAWAA, as the national affiliation whose members include Tasmanian women, be included in stakeholder roundtables, expert workshops and governance structures for ‘Rethink and Beyond’.
This is not a ‘nice to have’. Under CEDAW article 7, Australia has undertaken to ensure women’s participation in public and political life, including in bodies that determine public policy. When mental health strategies are being designed, women’s rights groups must be in the room. That is part of meeting our international obligations, not an optional extra to be added after the real decisions have been made.
We backed that ask with evidence of how we are already contributing elsewhere. The annex to AAWAA’s submission lists recent, in-person engagements with the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, the Australian Human Rights Commission, the Australian Law Reform Commission, the NSW Department of Justice, and parliamentary inquiries. Those processes have begun to recognise that independent women’s organisations bring a kind of expertise that cannot be replaced by generic ‘stakeholder representation’.
Our expectation is that the Tasmanian Department of Health will follow suit: that WAAT and AAWAA will be invited into the first stakeholder roundtable and any ongoing oversight or advisory structures for the strategy.
What this campaign taught us
The Tasmanian process has been a test of how we can be both principled and strategic.
We aligned five submissions around a shared analysis, while allowing each organisation to speak from its own ground. We invested in women’s skills so that more of us can write at the level governments cannot easily ignore. We used the opportunity not only to point out what is wrong – male violence, erosion of female‑only services, missing data – but to argue clearly for why sex‑based women’s organisations must be part of designing the solutions.
Now we wait to see the next steps. We will be watching whether women and girls are named in the draft strategy; whether female‑only services and sex‑disaggregated data are embedded as system features; and whether WAAT and AAWAA are invited into the next phase.
Whatever happens, this has been another step towards something bigger: making sure women’s voices are heard where decisions are made about our mental health, in Tasmania and across Australia.
All our submissions have been accepted and you can read all five, below.