In the weeks after the deaths of three women in quick succession in Ballarat last year, the principals of three of the regional Victorian city’s high schools brought their students together for a joint forum.
“The community was feeling pretty broken,” Stephan Fields, the principal of Ballarat high school, says.
“Ballarat – like many regional centres – is highly interconnected. There was so many connections across so many schools, sport establishments and friendship groups. So it had a really profound ripple effect.”
Fields says what the forum heard from the students was sobering. Some young women said they avoided going for a run at night. Others spoke of fear becoming part of their daily life. Young men spoke about their desire to be more vulnerable and the constraints of traditional gender roles.
“All of them said they wanted things to change,” Fields says.
Their call was heard. On Thursday, the Victorian government will launch Respect Ballarat – an Australian-first trial of a “saturation model” to prevent gender-based violence.
The model involves flooding a community with multiple programs, campaigns, education and support services to shift the attitudes and behaviours that drive violence.
Helen Bolton, the chief executive of Respect Victoria, says messaging in the city will be “impossible to ignore”.
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The four-year $9.8m trial was announced last year in response to an outpouring of grief and anger after the disappearance and alleged murder of 51-year-old Samantha Murphy, the death of mother Rebecca Young in a suspected murder-suicide by her partner, and the murder of Hannah McGuire by her ex-boyfriend.
Data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics earlier this month showed there were 175 victims of family homicide and related offences recorded nationally in 2024 – an increase of 14 victims from 2023. Of these, 37 were located in Victoria.
According to the Australian Femicide Watch, 50 Australian women have been killed so far this year.
Fields has been involved in the co-design of the model for the past 12 months. This work is deeply personal, as he has a relative who experienced family violence.
“These are real stories that are happening today and will be happening tomorrow, but we’ve got to believe in a future where we can address this, because for me, there is no other option,” he says.
Men, children and young people, new parents – particularly fathers – and emerging community leaders have been identified as the priority groups. In the initial stages, efforts will focus on workplaces, community sports clubs, schools, and early childhood, pre-natal and neonatal settings.
The co-design process revealed that, although young people often receive the right messages in the classroom, they were undermined by the attitudes and behaviours they encounter elsewhere – including at home, in sports clubs and among their peers.
Sport, in particular, stood out as “woven into the culture of Ballarat”, with high participation among children under 14 and adults in their 30s. But despite efforts to promote inclusion, “misogyny, homophobia and excusing of violence on and off the field” remains prevalent.
About 11,000 couples in Ballarat are raising children, with many involved in the co-design reporting difficulties in building equal partnerships, while across the city’s 5,000 workplaces, leadership remains male-dominated.
In schools, however, Ballarat is leading the way. Earlier this month, it was announced all 62 schools had signed on to deliver the government’s respectful relationships education program – making it the first regional area in the state to reach full participation.
Fields says this was driven largely by the students themselves.
“What they said was, ‘We need to know that if we’re at a party, that the same principles around “no means no” are being taught in every single school, regardless of whether or not it’s state, it’s independent or faith, we want a common message around respect, around safety’,” he says.
Bolton says community members will be empowered to “lean in and call out inappropriate behaviour”, training will be rolled out across the priority areas and there will be several targeted advertising campaigns including social media, billboards, cinema and radio ads, beginning with one focused on positive masculinity.
The pilot will also be supported by a boost in local specialist family violence services.
If successful, it will be rolled out to other parts of the state, and possibly even the country – South Australia’s recent royal commission into family violence has already recommended two similar pilot programs based on the Ballarat approach.
“This could be the ultimate model of how we do drive down violence in our community,” Bolton says.
The minister for women, Natalie Hutchins, says the Ballarat community had “come together after significant tragedies to take action to build a place free from violence”.
“When communities unite to reinforce these messages, the evidence shows a stronger and lasting impact.”
