Date: Saturday 25 July
Time: 12:00pm – 12:50pm
Location: Fringe Room 3
Format: Panel discussion
Organisation: Single Mother Families Australia
Government systems are designed to improve people’s lives, yet without regular scrutiny, they can also create, conceal and normalise harm. When policy is measured primarily through administrative performance rather than lived experience, gender blindness, safety risks and structural inequities can become embedded in legislation, program design and service delivery.
With reforms to child support, a review of employment services, and a national commitment to end violence against women and children, this discussion is particularly timely.
Using Australia’s child support system, employment services and South Australia’s Emergency Accommodation Assistance Program as case studies, Single Mother Families Australia will demonstrate why Government Systems Audits should become standard practice across governments. Evicting women and children from their last place of shelter is not a policy failure to be managed—it is evidence that the system itself needs to be audited.
Panel:
- Professor Kay Cook: Swinburne University & Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee
- Dr Terese Edwards, CEO, Single Mother Families Australain & Stakeholder Engagement Forum on Systems Abuse
- Aradia Sayner: Board Member, Single Mother Families Australia & Founder of Women in Poverty Inc
