Month: July 2026

As a service specifically highlighting and challenging the role of rigid and limited gender ideas in the perpetuation of violence, Engender Equality welcomes the draft Conversion Practices Prohibition Bill 2026.

Engender Equality is a specialist family violence service, that has long recognised the ways in which gender stereotypes and other gendered drivers of violence against women intersect and overlap with cis and hetero normative ideas that enable ongoing violence towards LGBTIQA+ folk. A commitment to LGBTIQA+ rights and inclusion has been evidenced in much of our work including in the development of LGBTIQA+ practice guidelines and in our current Dads for Gender Diversity project focussing on enhancing the capacity of fathers to affirm the gender identity of their trans children.

Just as gender inequity drives men’s violence against women, conversion practices arise in a society in which LGBTIQA+ folk are considered unequal to cisgender and heterosexual people. In such a context, forms of violence towards LGBTIQA+ folk such as conversion practices are too easily minimised and condoned.

Engender Equality welcomes the opportunity to contribute to the Second Action Plan under the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032. Along with this submission, our colleagues have attended multiple consultation forums in person and online. We are hopeful that this dedicated consultative approach will be followed up with clear action and investment.

This submission aims to put forward recommendations and examples of scalable solutions from our own practice in Lutruwita/Tasmania. Engender works tirelessly across the spectrum of family violence practice and service delivery, often in partnership with other organisations and communities. We offer primary prevention education to communities, share our specialist family violence expertise with early intervention programs in generalist services, deliver family violence response services via place-based models, and innovate specialist therapeutic services for victim-survivors in the face of insurmountable demand for our support.

Engender is dedicated to the cause to end violence against women and children, and all forms of gender-based violence. We are eager to contribute our experience and learn from others on a national scale as part of future work under the Second Action Plan.

Every homicide, suicide or other death linked to family violence is a tragic loss of life. All family violence-related deaths are preventable. Every death is a lesson: an opportunity to understand where our responses can improve, and a reminder that preventing violence requires more than a crisis intervention. It requires sustained action to address the underlying drivers of violence to create a Tasmania where people can live free from violence.

Engender Equality welcomes the Tasmania Law Reform Institute’s review of the Coroners Act 1995 (Tas) and the opportunity to contribute to reforms that strengthen Tasmania’s response to family violence-related deaths. We strongly support the recent legislative changes that recognise deaths where family violence has materially contributed to the death as matters warranting heightened coronial scrutiny through mandatory inquests.