How much would you pay for school to provide your child with lunch every day? | The Conversation

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

Most Australian children bring their lunch to school through a “lunchbox system”. But there is a growing push for schools to provide students with lunch.

Despite decades of efforts to promote better nutrition, it is estimated nearly half (44%) of the foods Australian children eat at school are energy-dense and nutrient-poor (or “discretionary foods”). This is alarming as our previous research with children aged nine to eleven shows an association between a poor diet and lower NAPLAN scores.

School programs providing students with a nutritious lunch are common around the world. Research shows school-provided lunches can increase social equity and improve nutritional, health and learning outcomes.

Pilot school lunch programs have begun in Australia, including Tasmania, New South Wales and Victoria.

In our study, we surveyed almost 400 parents of primary school students across Australia, to seek their views about school lunch programs.

We found 93% of parents surveyed were interested in school-provided lunches.

Many parents in our survey were also motivated by the idea all children would have access to the same meal, with 70% saying they valued the potential for equal and stigma-free food provision.

Parents in our study currently spent around A$6 per day on lunchboxes (most spent between $4–10). They said they were happy to pay a similar amount for a school-provided lunch.

Most were even willing to pay a little more to subsidise lunches for others to ensure all children receive a meal or larger portions for older children.

Source: How much would you pay for school to provide your child with lunch every day?

WoPAI Calls on Scotland to Vote for Equality Model on Prostitution | Women’s Platform for Action International

Women’s Platform for Action International (WoPAI) has written to Members of the Scottish Parliament ahead of the vote on prostitution legislation on 3 February, urging them to support the proposed Bill adopting an Equality (Nordic) Model approach.

Read the full letter here.

This vote represents a critical moment for Scotland: whether to confront one of the most entrenched forms of male violence against women, or to continue tolerating a system that enables the sexual exploitation of women—particularly those who are poor, marginalised, racialised, and otherwise vulnerable.

Claims that criminalising buyers increases violence or “drives prostitution underground” are not supported by evidence. These arguments have repeatedly been advanced by vested interests seeking to preserve the commercial sex industry and have consistently failed under scrutiny.

Most recently, the European Court of Human Rights confirmed that France’s adoption of the Equality Model does not violate the European Convention on Human Rights, explicitly rejecting claims that criminalising buyers endangers women in prostitution. The Court affirmed states’ legitimate aim—and obligation—to combat exploitation and violence against women.

Countries such as Sweden and France demonstrate that it is possible to reduce prostitution, challenge male sexual entitlement, and advance women’s rights through law and policy.

Source: WoPAI Calls on Scotland to Vote for Equality Model on Prostitution | Women’s Platform for Action International

Women will suffer from commercial surrogacy scheme | The Australian | Julie Bindel

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

As with prostitution, surrogacy is often promoted by having the very women exploited by it speak out publicly in favour of it. They insist it is not only a free choice, but one that is empowering.
Women are conditioned to be “nice” and to sacrifice ourselves for others. Yet every pregnancy is a major endeavour that carries risk, and surrogacy can cause complications and additional health risks.
Even in countries where commercial surrogacy is illegal, surrogate mothers are eligible to receive expenses, which can often add up to the level of a relatively low salary. The cash, therefore, is the coercion. The vast majority of women engaged in surrogacy do it out of financial desperation and lack of choice.
And where commercial surrogacy is legal – in California or the state of New York, for example, or countries such as Ukraine, Mexico, India or Thailand – surrogate mothers are often paid significantly less than they were originally offered. And if complications arise during the pregnancy, or a miscarriage occurs, surrogates can be financially penalised.
Australia looks to be moving towards full legalisation of commercial surrogacy.
The surrogacy market is out of control around the world, but in Australia and the UK things are moving particularly fast.
The surrogacy process costs around $65,000 in Australia, but only a fraction of this is ever paid to the surrogate herself. The rest goes to agencies, lawyers and brokers.
Amendments were passed in the Australian Senate (sic), including broader access to Assisted Reproductive Technology and altruistic (unpaid) surrogacy for all people, including same-sex couples, single people, transgender and intersex individuals, and the removal of the necessity for couples and individuals to prove a clinical infertility diagnosis to access ART.
In her report on surrogacy, Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, called for surrogacy to be recognised as a system of violence, exploitation and abuse against women, and for a global ban on the practice.
Feminist campaigners in Australia, and those of us elsewhere in the world concerned about the rent-a-womb trade, are convinced that these amendments to the law are a slippery slope for full commercial legal surrogacy. If this is allowed to happen, babies will become nothing more than merchandise.
[Ed: I think the legislation referred to might be the Assisted Reproductive Technology and Surrogacy Bill 2025 passed in the WA Legislative Council in December 2025 rather than in the Senate].

Source: Women will suffer from commercial surrogacy scheme

Nebraska Lawmakers Move to Finish the Work as New Bills Advance | LGB Courage Coalition

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

LINCOLN, Neb. — The Nebraska legislature will hold hearings this week on bills to establish sex-based protections in public facilities, fully ban gender transition treatments for Nebraskans under 19, and extend the statute of limitations for malpractice claims related to such treatments.

Senator Kathleen Kauth (Omaha, District 31) is sponsoring all three bills, which will be heard in the Military and Veterans Affairs Committee on Wednesday and Thursday. Jamie Reed and other LGB Courage Coalition members will be testifying, as will attorneys Kara Dansky and Erin Friday, and evolutionary biologist Colin Wright.

These bills would strengthen and codify earlier legislative efforts that had similar goals but which left significant loopholes. Amid a changing political climate and a growing body of evidence that patients are harmed by gender interventions, the time is right to complete what was left undone.

Since Nebraska passed its law that compromised on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, the policy landscape across the Midwest has shifted significantly. South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri have enacted explicit statutory bans on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors. Missouri’s Supreme Court recently upheld its law, while the Kansas legislature overrode the governor’s veto to enact its ban

Nebraska’s regulatory environment is now out of alignment with its neighboring states, most of which have enacted clear statutory limits on gender medicine.

Source: Nebraska Lawmakers Move to Finish the Work as New Bills Advance

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny – and this one ticks every box | Pearls and Irritations

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

A sweeping new bill to combat antisemitism, hate and extremism was rushed through federal parliament this week with minimal scrutiny and major rule-of-law flaws. Its vague definitions, retrospective reach and expanded executive powers risk undermining rights, due process and democratic accountability.

The legislation allows the minister who is responsible for the Australian Federal Police to recommend to the Governor-General that he or she label an organisation a prohibited hate group.

The minister has to be satisfied on reasonable grounds that the organisation proposed to be banned has engaged in, assisted, planned, or advocated in conduct that is a hate crime.

What is troubling about this power is that no conviction for a hate crime is required and the minister can take into account conduct before this law came into force.

But the most troubling aspect is that the minister does not have to have accord procedural fairness to the organisation (which by the way can be a group that plays social soccer or a formal group with officer holders) he or she proposes to ban.

As the late leading UK judge Tom Bingham put it in his gem of a book, _The Rule of Law_, one of the elements of procedural fairness is that the person whose interests are affected shall have the right to be heard – a principle that Bingham rightly observed is of great importance.

The powers of executive government in this law are a recipe for the tyranny about which Bourke spoke.

There is also a more fundamental issue here. That is, what is ‘hate’? This law says its conduct that ‘involves publicly inciting hatred of another person (the target group) because of the race or national or ethnic origin of the target or target group.’

In many cases that will not be an issue but there are examples of where on one view it could be said to be ‘hate’ crime but on another not so.

You can now be convicted and jailed of possessing or displaying a prohibited symbol even if you had no knowledge it was prohibited! It is enough that you were reckless.

Worse still, the offence reverses the onus of proof. It is up to the person charged – contrary to the usual rule that you are not obliged to say anything because the onus is on the prosecution to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt – to prove that they are not guilty of the offence by adducing evidence the display or possession was for academic, religious, educational, artistic literary or scientific purposes, and that it was in the public interest.

The other purpose that is legitimate is if the display or possession is for a media purpose and in the public interest.

As equally dangerous is that the media defence only applies to those working in a “professional journalists’ capacity”.

To describe the dangerous elements of this new law would take many thousand more words than are available here. But you get the picture.

Source: Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny – and this one ticks every box | Pearls and Irritations

The Law Is Clear. The TV Segment Wasn’t. | Kirra Pendergast

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

There is no ban on children using social media in Australia. That is a media invention, not a legal one. There is no law that criminalises a child for having an account. None.

What has actually happened is quieter, and far more significant. Responsibility has shifted. Slowly, deliberately, and long overdue.

For the first time since social media started appearing approx. 20yrs ago now, the burden is not sitting primarily on children and parents. It is sitting where it should have been all along, with the platforms that design these systems, market them aggressively, and extract profit from them at scale.

The Australian Government did not ban kids. It restricted platforms from accessing kids. That is the entire point.

For more than fifteen years, parents have been told their child is doing something wrong by being online. That they are doing something wrong by allowing it. That under 13 equals illegal, dangerous, irresponsible and bad parenting.

That message did not empower parents. It shamed them.

Australia has not banned children from social media. It has begun restricting platforms from offering unsafe services to children. This is about platform accountability, not child punishment. That is the truth and it matters because this is not a story about disobedient kids or negligent parents. It is a story about powerful companies designing unsafe systems and a media ecosystem that keeps letting them off the hook.

Source: The Law Is Clear. The TV Segment Wasn’t.

‘You can’t educate your way out of violence if th… | National Indigenous Times

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

Governments across Australia have poured millions into coercive-control campaigns, but domestic violence advocate Ashlee Donohue says the failure to properly fund frontline services is leaving Aboriginal women at deadly risk.

“You can’t educate your way out of violence if women have nowhere safe to go,” Ms Donohue said.

Coercive control is defined by governments as a pattern of repeated behaviours — including manipulation, intimidation, isolation and financial control, and physical violence — used to dominate a partner and strip away their autonomy.

Ms Donohue, a proud Dunghutti woman, does not dispute the harm coercive control causes but she argues public messaging is being prioritised over the practical infrastructure women need to survive.

She wants governments to invest far more heavily in what she calls the “on-the-ground basics”: safe houses, women’s refuges, crisis accommodation, transport, and properly staffed services for women trying to leave violent relationships; especially in regional and remote Australia.

“It’s our women who end up being put in police cells and hospital beds, and too often they die from injuries caused by domestic violence.”

Across Australia, Aboriginal women are 34 times more likely than non-Aboriginal women to experience domestic and family violence, and to be hospitalised or killed as a result.

Source: ‘You can’t educate your way out of violence if th… | National Indigenous Times

Repeated brain injuries linked to memory changes in intimate partner violence survivors, study finds – ABC News

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views

In short:

An Australian-first study has found evidence of memory changes among women who experienced more than six brain injuries as a result of concussions and strangulation from intimate partner violence.

The Monash University researchers say women who experience violence are less likely to be diagnosed and treated for brain injury compared to sportspeople.

What’s next:

Advocates say there needs to be more awareness about the risks among health professionals and women who experience family violence.

—-

The peer-reviewed study, led by Monash University researchers and published in the Journal of Neurotrauma, was based on comparative cognitive assessments of 146 women, comparing a group of healthy controls with a cohort who had experienced partner violence more than six months earlier.

Alfred Hospital clinical neuropsychologist and study author Dr Jennifer Makovec Knight said some people may not realise that strangulation — including consensual strangulation — can cause different kinds of brain injuries.

There has been a growing focus on the safe treatment of brain injuries, particularly in sports, given increasing evidence that even mild concussions, and especially repeated ones, can have long-term impacts.

A 2018 study by Brain Injury Australia found 40 per cent of family violence survivors who attended Victorian hospitals over a 10-year period had sustained a brain injury.

But that data only related to those who attended hospital.

The Monash-led study found women who suffered more than six suspected brain injuries (concussions and/or strangulations) at the hands of a partner had worse scores on memory and learning tests.

That was even after controlling for factors like age, mental health conditions and substance use.

It also found the rates of strangulation were “alarmingly high” — more than 80 per cent of the cohort with repeated brain injuries (more than six) had experienced both head hits and strangulation.

She said that was an important finding — particularly when, as the researchers acknowledge, cognitive changes may be weaponised by perpetrators to claim a survivor of violence is not capable of decision-making or parenting, for example.

Dr Makovic Knight said her hope was that this study could prompt tailored screening and treatment of concussion and strangulation-linked brain injuries for women who experience intimate partner violence.

Source: Repeated brain injuries linked to memory changes in intimate partner violence survivors, study finds – ABC News

Call for Special General Meeting as Mardi Gras Rejects Centring Trans Rights | Sydney Criminal Lawyers

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

At the 25 November 2025 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras (SGLMG) annual general meeting, Pride in Protest moved three successful resolutions, including recommending that transgender rights be a central focus of the 2026 event. However, following a 50 day delay on confirming the status of these motions, the Mardi Gras Board has now determined to reject them.

Mardi Gras cochairs Kathy Pavlich and Mits Delisle broke the news to the SGLMG membership via a 20 January 2026 email, in which they explained that the decision reflected the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission governance framework the organisation operates under, along with ensuring that “Mardi Gras’ values, strategic priorities, and long-term sustainability” are upheld.

“I moved the motions on trans rights and antidiscrimination reform, and they are the most popularly supported motions in AGM history,” Pride in Protest spokesperson Evan Gray made clear in a 21 January statement.

Gray further announced on Tuesday that Pride in Protest is calling for an extraordinary general meeting of the Mardi Gras board and membership to further debate the outcome of the motions, as the majority of members sought to progress them.

The SGLMG board cochairs suggested in their Tuesday email that progressing the three resolutions was not in keeping with its “legal and fiduciary duties”, and nor its “legal, financial, operational, reputational and safety considerations”.

Source: Call for Special General Meeting as Mardi Gras Rejects Centring Trans Rights

This is my story – by Jennifer Sey – Sey Everything

All entries on Feminist Legal Clinic’s News Digest Blog are extracts from news articles and other publications, with the source available at the link at the bottom. The content is not originally generated by Feminist Legal Clinic and does not necessarily reflect our views.

When I’m on the road at speaking engagements, I mostly just tell my personal story. I tell the audience about my athletic background, speaking out about abuse in sports, my rise up the corporate ladder, speaking out about covid driven school closures and getting cancelled for it, and why I started XX-XY Athletics.

It’s my life and everything that has happened, everything that I am, is why I started this brand. People are usually pretty interested, which I’ll never cease to find a little bit surprising.

I’ve written two books, both memoirs. But I think this short 2 minute video might tell my story better than all those hundreds of pages. Thanks to Brett Craig, our amazing creative director for his unbelievable storytelling abilities.

Anyway, here’s the “founder story” of XX-XY Athletics.

Source: This is my story – by Jennifer Sey – Sey Everything