Government launches new campaign to get you to talk to your kids about consent

ABC News 26.5.24 By political reporter Claudia Long
New government consent campaign(Source: Australian government)

The federal government will be encouraging parents to talk with children of all ages about consent with a new campaign launching today.

Ads on social media, billboards and television will direct parents towards a new website, consent.gov.au, where they can read discussion guides for how to discuss consent with their kids.

Research commissioned by the government to guide the consent campaign found that while parents see consent as something important to discuss with their children, two in five wouldn't intervene if they saw or overheard a non-consensual act.

Eighty-six per cent of the 2,031 participants agreed adults should be speaking more about consent with young people but a majority weren't confident in actually doing so.

A third of adults said they believed the importance of consent had been "blown out of proportion," which researchers said presented another roadblock to conversations with kids.

Three questions about consent on a black background, the phrases are in purple, blue and orange.
Ads on social media, billboards and television will direct parents towards a new website, consent.gov.au.(Image: Australian government)

What will the campaign involve?

Ads for Consent Can't Wait will be rolled out on billboards, social media and television, featuring questions like 'Is a kiss consent to more?' and 'What if we've been drinking?' urging parents who don't know the answers to head to consent.gov.au.

There's a 20-page guide for adults to talk to children of varying ages about consent, using prompts like "Even if your friends said yes to the wrestling game, if someone says 'stop', you have to stop straight away … Can you think of a time you needed to stop a game?"

A government booklet with conversation prompts to talk about consent with children and young people of varying ages.
The campaign includes a 20-page guide for adults to talk to children of varying ages about consent.(Image: Australian government)

There is also a 13-page guide for how to speak with other parents about talking to young people and consent, with conversation starters including "how do you talk to your kids about awkward topics?" and "at what point during a sexual encounter are you meant to ask for consent?"

The government's panel advising on the campaign included Sydney Medical School's Dr Melissa Kang (who formerly wrote the Dolly Doctor column), Laurel House sexual assault service's Kathryn Fordyce and consent campaigner Chanel Contos, among others.

'We're living in a divided society'

According to the research conducted by marketing data company Kantar Public for the government, Australians are more aware of discussions around consent than a few years ago but not everyone is on the same page about what it actually means.

Researchers said this was due to confusion around what constitutes consent, how to approach the topic with young people and general discomfort around issues to do with sexual violence.

"There seems to be such a blurry line for what constitutes as consent," said one participant.

A government booklet with information about consent and conversation starter prompts to use with other parents.
The campaign includes a 13-page guide for how to speak with other parents about consent.(Image: Australian government)

"The conversations and the rhetoric you hear every day … it's like, 'what?'."

Another participant said "we're living in a society that still has this stigma … we're living in a divided society."

But while many participants said they felt the issue had been "blown out of proportion" 77 per cent said it was personally important to them and even more think adults need to talk with young people about it.

Campaign comes amid criticism

The new campaign comes amid criticism of the federal government by frontline violence workers for not investing enough in women's safety services.

The budget included funding over two years for a "rapid review" of best practice for preventing violence against women including sexual violence.

But frontline services, legal centres and sexual violence response organisations said the government must do more with some labelling Labor's claim of substantially boosting funding to women's safety as "trickery and deception."

Consent Can't Wait follows the Stop It At The Start campaign, which encouraged parents to teach children respectful attitudes to help stop violence against women, started by the former Coalition government in 2016 and continued by Labor.

That campaign will continue alongside Consent Can't Wait, though researchers from the University of Technology Sydney have questioned how effective such campaigns are in having an impact on rates of sexual, family and domestic violence.


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