Australia will soon report to the UN on how it has upheld women’s rights over the past decade. We tested that account as it currently stands against the data, the courts and the FOI record.
Over the ten years since Australia’s last periodic report to the UN on its compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the prevalence of male sexual violence against women has increased, Australia’s discrimination law has been found to contain an unresolved conflict that only Parliament can fix, the legal basis for female-only spaces and services has become increasingly precarious, and the Government has declined to engage with the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls. These are among the concerns AAWAA has raised in our submission on Australia’s draft seventh periodic report, which recently closed for public consultation. This article sets out the key questions the government needs to address.
1. Will Australia acknowledge that male sexual violence against women has increased?
The ABS Personal Safety Survey shows that, over the last ten years, male sexual violence against women has increased, including male sexual violence by a cohabiting partner. These are central indicators for any assessment of Australia’s performance under ICCPR provisions relating to life, women’s bodily integrity and freedom from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
The draft ICCPR report describes substantial investment under the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022–2032, including a National Cabinet package totalling $4.7 billion with $4.4 billion in new Commonwealth funding, in addition to earlier commitments; however, it does not explicitly acknowledge that male sexual violence has worsened over the reporting period. The National Plan and related frameworks also use largely gender‑neutral language – ‘gender‑based violence’ and ‘people who use violence’ – rather than naming males as almost the sole perpetrators or identifying mothers and older women as distinct, sex‑based cohorts at distinct risk of men’s violence.
The question for Government is whether it will present these trends plainly, including in the final ICCPR report, and explain how policy will respond, with sex‑disaggregated data that recognises women as a class and treats mothers and older women as specific groups.
2. Will Parliament resolve the conflict between sex and gender identity in the SDA?
Since the 2013 amendments, the Sex Discrimination Act (SDA) has protected both sex and gender identity, without any clear framework for resolving conflicts between them. At first instance in Tickle v Giggle for Girls, Justice Bromwich held that SDA provisions concerning gender identity derive their support from the ICCPR, while sex‑based prohibitions are grounded in CEDAW. On appeal, the Full Federal Court in Giggle for Girls Pty Ltd v Tickle confirmed that the SDA now contains two protected attributes – sex and gender identity – rooted in different treaties, and indicated that the tension between them is a matter for Parliament to address.
The draft ICCPR report nonetheless describes the non‑discrimination framework as “comprehensive” and “functional”, and does not engage with the implications of this conflict for women’s sex‑based protections and rights. The Human Rights (Parliamentary Scrutiny) Act 2011 and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights (PJCHR) did not identify this problem when the 2013 amendments passed.
We now wait to see if Parliament will undertake the detailed legislative work – including genuine consultation with women’s sex-based advocacy organisations – to clarify the meaning of ‘sex’ in the SDA and ensure that sex‑based protections for women are not subordinated to gender identity claims.
3. How will the Government rebuild transparent engagement with UN mechanisms on violence against women?
The draft report presents Australia as an active and good‑faith partner in international efforts to end violence against women and girls. FOI material cited in AAWAA’s submission suggests a more complex picture in relation to the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls (SRVAWG), Reem Alsalem.
An internal ‘fireside chat’ transcript (DEWR LEX 1781) records Australia’s then Ambassador for Gender Equality stating that Ms Alsalem had taken “a fairly difficult position on transgender rights in a way that doesn’t conform with our views” and that Australia was “directly engaging through various different mechanisms” about those concerns. A DFAT document list (LEX 12146) includes final documents dated 19 February 2025 titled “Australia to not provide submission” in relation to the SRVAWG’s questionnaire on sex‑based violence against women and girls, which strongly suggests a deliberate decision not to respond. By contrast, DFAT LEX 13100 reveals detailed briefings prepared for engagement with the Independent Expert on sexual orientation and gender identity, with no equivalent engagement disclosed regarding Ms Alsalem’s mandate.
The Government needs to signal its intention to restore transparent engagement with the SRVAWG and similar mechanisms, including by responding to future calls for input and addressing, in its final ICCPR report, the SRVAWG’s findings on issues such as surrogacy as a form of reproductive violence.
4. What steps will be taken to ensure women’s organisations can participate meaningfully in law‑making?
CEDAW article 7 and ICCPR participation guarantees require that women be able to take part in public affairs, including the development of laws that affect our sex‑based protections and rights. AAWAA’s submission identifies several recent processes where women’s organisations were marginal or excluded.
In New South Wales, the Equality Legislation Amendment (LGBTIQA+) Act 2023 took the form of an omnibus bill amending many Acts simultaneously, with consultation confined to a short online Likert‑scale survey; prose submissions were not accepted, and the bill proceeded despite over 85 per cent of survey respondents indicating opposition. In Western Australia, the Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Amendment (Sex or Gender Changes) Act 2024 was introduced, debated and passed within weeks under an ‘emergency health’ framing, with a motion to refer the bill to committee defeated and no consultation with women’s organisations despite significant implications for female‑only spaces. The WA Assisted Reproductive Technology and Surrogacy Bill 2025 emerged from a ministerial panel dominated by industry interests with a direct stake in expanding surrogacy, while abolitionist feminist organisations were excluded and the bill bypassed the Law Reform Commission and full committee scrutiny.
The issue facing federal and state governments is whether they will adjust consultation practices so that women’s organisations – including those taking abolitionist and sex‑based positions – can participate in a timely, substantive way in law‑making on equality, surrogacy, identity law and related reforms.
5. How will effective remedies be made reliably available to women organising as a sex class?
Article 2(3) of the ICCPR requires that individuals have access to effective remedies where our rights are violated. The submission suggests that women acting as a sex class cannot rely on timely, accessible remedies and are often forced into complex litigation.
The Lesbian Action Group’s application under SDA s 44 for an exemption to hold female‑only events for lesbian and bisexual women was refused by the AHRC despite the Commission acknowledging “significant structural and entrenched discrimination” against lesbians; the decision did not seriously engage with ICCPR rights to expression, assembly and association or with the SDA’s s 7D ‘special measures’. The group ultimately succeeded on judicial review in Lesbian Action Group Inc v Australian Human Rights Commission (FCA 432), but only after years of litigation. In Giggle for Girls Pty Ltd v Tickle, the primary judgment’s approach to a female‑only online platform illustrates the risk faced by women who attempt to maintain female‑only services, even though the appellate outcome differed.
Structural problems, not discrete failures
The overarching question is what changes — to legislation, institutional guidance and AHRC practice — will be made so that women, including lesbians, can obtain predictable, timely remedies when our sex‑based organising is constrained, rather than having to rely on individual Federal Court and Full Court test cases to clarify the law.
That last point matters beyond the specific cases. When the legal position can only be established through costly, years-long litigation, the practical effect is that only organisations with the resources and resolve to litigate can defend female-only spaces and services. Most cannot. The effect is not legal uncertainty in the abstract: it is that female-only organising becomes the preserve of those who recognise the need for it and who can afford to fight for it.
The pattern indicates a structural problem rather than a series of discrete failures. The data on male sexual violence is getting worse. The legal framework for sex-based protections is unresolved. The consultation processes that should catch these problems are excluding the women most affected. And the international mechanisms designed to provide independent scrutiny are being managed rather than engaged with. Each of these issues has its own history and its own evidence base. But what connects them is that, in each case, the Government’s draft ICCPR report either does not acknowledge the problem or presents an incomplete account of it.
AAWAA’s submission asks the Australian Government to address these questions in its final ICCPR report, and to assess its own framework against the data, the FOI record and the case law, not simply against its current characterisation of that framework as “comprehensive” and “functional”. Where it does not, the UN Human Rights Committee will have the opportunity to press these issues directly.
Read the full submission, below.