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As women across Victoria experience high levels of depression and anxiety, chief executives from the stateâs 12 womenâs health services will call on Treasurer Tim Pallas to include a large sum for gender-specific mental health services in the May 20 budget.
The members of Victoriaâs Womenâs Health Service Council say they would be âdevastatedâ if their budget bid for $59 million, much of it for mental health support, is not met but believe it is unlikely to be.
Women in Victoria are experiencing high levels of anxiety and depression and womenâs health services say support must be funded in the May 20 budget.
Canberra, Australia – Australian politics appears set to face a reckoning after a wave of allegations of sexual assault and harassment committed by multiple politicians and staff at Parliament House in the country’s capital.
Allegations have so far been made against a male political staffer, alleged to have raped a female colleague in 2019, against Attorney-General Christian Porter, accused of sexually assaulting a female acquaintance when both were teenagers in 1988; and against a senior aide of a member of parliament, alleged to have sexually harassed several teenage girls.
“The 1990s saw a sudden rise in women in parliament, but even now, only a quarter of politicians are women,” Blair Williams, a research fellow at The Australian National University’s Global Institute for Women’s Leadership, told Al Jazeera.
Tweet spurs women to rally against alleged sexual assaults in Australia s parliament stuff.co.nz - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from stuff.co.nz Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
It started with a tweet.
Janine Hendry, a 58-year-old Melbourne academic, designer, entrepreneur and mother pondered on Twitter how many âextremely disgruntledâ women it would take to link arms around Parliament House and stand in silent protest against discrimination and alleged sexual abuse in the nationâs Parliament.
A tweet from academic, designer and mother Janine Hendry formed the spark for protest marches across the country.
Credit:Simon Schluter
âIt was a visceral anger ⦠just this growing frustration and sense amongst my followers and friends this is outrageous, we have had enough,â Ms Hendry says.
Within two hours she had a very precise response from âsome lovely personâ. If there were two people per metre, they tweeted, it would take 3770 people.