National Action Plan must fund what makes prevention work

A partnership of nearly 40 organisations across Melbourne's south and south-east is calling on the Australian Government to make sustained, place-based primary prevention a central pillar of the Second Action Plan under the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022–2032. 

The Promoting Respect and Equity Together (PRET) Partnership has contributed a detailed submission to the consultation on the Second Action Plan, drawing on a decade of regional prevention practice across 10 local government areas and a population of approximately 1.56 million people. 

Coordinated by Women's Health in the South East (WHISE), PRET brings together councils, health services, multicultural and ethno-specific organisations, Aboriginal Community Controlled and Aboriginal-led organisations, legal and family services, faith-based organisations, disability services, universities and government departments. 

The submission argues that Australia does not need to continually reinvent primary prevention. It needs to recognise, resource and connect the approaches already demonstrating impact. 

"Primary prevention is generational work. It cannot succeed when it is funded through short project cycles that end just as relationships, trust and capability are beginning to take hold," WHISE CEO Kit McMahon said. 

"Across our region, organisations are already working together in schools, workplaces, early childhood services, councils, sporting clubs, faith communities and community settings. 

"The opportunity for the Second Action Plan is to fund the infrastructure that connects this work and enables it to grow, rather than asking communities to start again with each new funding round." 

More than 160 prevention activities are being coordinated across Melbourne's Southern Metropolitan Region. PRET provides the shared strategy, relationships, workforce development and learning infrastructure that turns these activities into a coordinated regional effort. 

An independent evaluation of PRET's 2021–2025 strategy found that the partnership: 

• engaged 28 new organisations and 37 new practitioners in prevention; 

• more than doubled participation in its working groups, from 58 to 137; 

• built the capability of more than 1,000 people through 14 learning forums; 

• supported seven initiatives that engaged more than 300 men and boys; and 

• increased participating organisations' commitment to gender equality from 82 per cent to 97 per cent. 

The submission also warns that governments cannot understand whether prevention is working if they measure it primarily through rates of violence, homicide and demand for crisis services. 

"Counting the harm that has occurred is essential, but it is not the same as measuring prevention," Ms McMahon said. 

"Prevention changes relationships, community norms, organisational practices and systems over many years. The Second Action Plan needs measures that can recognise those changes, value community and lived expertise, and support learning over the timeframes in which prevention actually works." 

PRET is asking the Second Action Plan to: 

1. Treat primary prevention as a distinct but connected national priority, with sustained funding, its own outcomes framework and a dedicated workforce strategy. 

2. Fund regional prevention partnerships as essential infrastructure, including the place-based leadership of local government and the backbone organisations that connect activity across regions. 

3. Establish a prevention-specific measurement framework, with ring-fenced funding for longitudinal, participatory and culturally responsive evaluation. 

4. Recognise prevention practitioners as skilled specialists and provide secure employment, workforce development and support to navigate resistance and backlash. 

5. Embed lived experience within prevention through appropriately remunerated roles, supervision, organisational readiness and shared decision-making. 

6. Invest in culturally embedded, in-language prevention led by ethno-specific, Aboriginal, multicultural and faith-based organisations. 

7. Name and resource the response to organised backlash, including legislative action on algorithm-driven misogyny and harmful online content, alongside practical support for practitioners navigating a hostile climate. 

8. Extend responsibility for prevention across governments, businesses, sport, media and the wider community, rather than placing the burden on children, mothers or under-resourced community organisations. 

The submission offers PRET's regional partnership model, its Framework for Embedding Lived Experience in the Primary Prevention of Gender-Based Violence — the first of its kind nationally — and its tested workforce and community initiatives as practical approaches that could be adapted and scaled nationally. 

"We know what prevention looks like when it works, what it costs when it is underfunded and what is lost when governments change, funding cycles end and skilled workers leave," Ms McMahon said. 

"The Second Action Plan can provide the long-term architecture that communities need to prevent violence before it occurs." 

Read the Full submission

ENDS