Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last Friday I participated in a theatre workshop at Roxburgh Park College in my electorate which addressed the issue of forced marriage and the rights of young people to determine their own future.

The workshop was organised by Miss Thoiba Saeedh, an intern in my office from the University of Melbourne, who also happens to be an AusAID sponsored student from the Maldives. The program was an annotation of the forced marriage pilot project run by Australian Catholic Religious Against Trafficking in Humans. The purpose of the workshop was to formulate a better understanding of forced marriage, to raise awareness and to empower young girls and boys to say no in the event of a forced marriage situation.

ACRATH and other community organisations have raised forced marriage as an issue deserving of attention and campaigning here in Australia. This particular workshop was initiated by my office as a way of raising awareness amongst my constituents of forced marriage and the broader issues of cultural identity and negotiating the competing demands of communal and family expectations with individual rights and aspirations, particularly between different generations. Given the very diverse migrant communities, in particular the newly-arrived and emerging communities from Africa, the Middle East and South-East Asia, Calwell is very much an appropriate place for pilot programs such as this to be run at the very grassroots level.

I want to take this opportunity to thank Elizabeth Payne from ACRATH for the amazing work that she does and that everyone at ACRATH does. I also want to thank the deputy principal, Tony Wakefield, teachers Yolande Suffern, Denise Rimoni and Angela Greet, and the year 10 sociology students from Roxburgh Park College for their tremendous effort and cooperation in making the workshop a success.

The project involved the use of applied theatre as the medium in which the issue of forced marriage was explored. Applied theatre is a platform used in many parts of the world to create dialogue on sensitive issues and human rights concerns. The applied theatre workshop provided an opportunity for the students to role play in a hypothetical situation, in this case, of course, a forced marriage situation, which was then enacted by some of the students whilst other students and audience members were given the opportunity to replace characters and redirect the theatre performance to ensure a different outcome for the protagonists.

By replacing and introducing characters we were able to discuss a range of issues surrounding forced marriage. We focused very much on the critical point of emphasising the fact that in Australia a forced marriage is against the law and that people have a right to say no. We analysed the effectiveness of the existing legislation. We also analysed the potential responses of families when authorities try to step in to what is considered by the family a private family matter. We analysed the reluctance of victims to seek help for fear of causing trouble for themselves and their family members. We also looked at the kind of help that is available for victims, such as being able to go on an airport watch list if you are under the age of 18. We also looked at other options, such as the issue of negotiations with family members, and we encouraged those negotiations.

Although in 2013 the Australian parliament criminalised forced marriage, to date there have been no prosecutions. However, many cases of forced marriage have since come to light and have subsequently been reported to the Australian Federal Police. Forced marriage is a serious human rights abuse. It is a practice that robs young girls and women as well as boys of their choices, in most cases denying them education, freedom and independence. Forced marriage involves threats of physical abuse, rape, physical assault, trauma and deep psychological impacts on the victim. In Australia, forced marriage is characterised as a human rights and gender inequality issue, and it is one that is 'not limited to any particular cultural group, religion or ethnicity'. Although it is now an illegal act whose perpetrators can be prosecuted, we need to be aware that it is also very much a cultural issue that results from culturally construed ideas around gender roles, religious and cultural practices, family honour and tradition. So in dealing with this issue we need to understand its causes and work to eradicate them whilst at the same time enforcing, where warranted, the formal legal response that is necessary to deal with this human rights abuse in Australia.

I want to congratulate all at Roxburgh Park Secondary College for their amazing contribution to this very important issue.