Thousands of people are set to take to the streets this weekend in 17 rallies across Australia calling for greater action on a growing epidemic of women killed in violent attacks.
Organised by advocacy group What Were You Wearing (WWYW), the first rallies will be held in Ballarat and Newcastle on Friday.
Saturday’s rallies will be held in Sydney and Adelaide, and on Sunday rallies will take place across the country in Melbourne, Bendigo, Geelong, Coffs Harbour, Wagga Wagga, Orange, Perth, the Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast, Brisbane and Canberra.
“Enough is enough,” the rallies’ organisers posted to social media. “The number keeps going up and this is why we are protesting this weekend. Fight with us for change.”
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, will be in attendance at Sunday’s rally in Canberra.
It is understood he will raise the issue of violence against women at the next national cabinet following discussions with premiers Jacinta Allan, Chris Minns and Peter Malinauskas.
The South Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who is among those scheduled to speak at the Adelaide rally, has called for Albanese to designate violence against women “a national emergency”.
“This is an epidemic and it’s time we started talking about it not in terms of just ‘violence against women’,” Hanson-Young told Guardian Australia in an interview for the Australian Politics podcast. “This is the murder of women. This is the terrorising of women in their homes and on the street. Women don’t feel safe.”
WWYW’s founder, Sarah Williams, said the group had five demands including more funding for domestic, family and sexual violence support services as well as for Albanese to declare the violence a national emergency.
“I didn’t expect when I started organising the rallies that so many people from everywhere over Australia would be not only angry but wanting to stand together in solidarity to really see an end to this,” Williams told ABC News Breakfast.
“I think there is no better time than now to really put some pressure on change-makers to make some change.”
Hanson-Young said that instead of political hand-wringing, there should be an “all-shoulders-to-the-wheel” approach, starting with better funding of support services and a “root-and-branch review of the justice system”, including apprehended violence orders and how well they protect women.
Asked if what she called “an epidemic” of violence against women should be designated as a form of terrorism, as some have suggested, Hanson-Young said Australians needed to “change the way we think about it and the way we talk about it”.
“Because what we’re doing isn’t working.”
Violence against women has long plagued Australia. There is no official counter for women’s deaths, but the number of women who die in gendered violence is collated by Destroy the Joint’s Counting Dead Women and Femicide Watch’s Red Heart Campaign. According to their figures, an average of one woman a week was killed in domestic violence incidents last year. This year that average has grown to almost one woman murdered every four days.
“Right around the country our communities are reeling from an increase in family and domestic violence,” the independent senator David Pocock said.
“Find your nearest rally and get out there to show that enough is enough.”
Here are where the rallies will take place across Australia:
Friday
Ballarat: Bridge Town Hall at 5pm
Newcastle: Newcastle Museum on Nobby’s foreshore at 6pm
Saturday
Sydney: Belmore Park in Haymarket at 1pm
Adelaide: Parliament House at 11am
Hobart: Parliament House lawns at 1pm
Sunday
Melbourne: State Library at 10am
Perth: Parliament House at 1pm
Brisbane: King George Square at 11am
Canberra: Commonwealth Park at 2pm
Bendigo: Rosalind Park at 11am
Geelong: Market Square Mall at 11am
Coffs Harbour: Jetty foreshore at 11am
Sunshine Coast: Foundation Park at 11am
Gold Coast: Broadwater Parklands at 11am
Orange: Robertson Park at 2.30pm
Cobram: Federation Park at 11am
Wagga Wagga: Victory Memorial Gardens at 11am
In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123 and the domestic abuse helpline is 0808 2000 247. In the US, the suicide prevention lifeline is 988 and the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). Other international helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org
