March 4 Justice calls for change, more than 1000 people attend

MORE than 1000 people marched with signs and banging pots and pans through the CBD today for the March 4 Justice rally

Darwin Women march down Bennett St towards Parliament House. Picture Glenn Campbell

More than 1000 people marched with signs and banging pots and pans through the CBD today for the March 4 Justice rally.

The march called on the Federal Government to pick up it’s act in regards to its response to recent sexual abuse allegations.

Event organiser Sara Rowe said the march was about creating a groundswell movement.

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Darwin Women March 4 Justice. Picture Glenn Campbell

The rally was held across the country with an estimated 100,000 people participating at about 40 locations.

“On a Territory level we’re calling for better responses to domestic family and sexual violence in the Territory,” she said.

“We’re calling for police to receive better education – how to respond to these kinds of reports, we know they’re terribly low rates in the Territory of police actually following through with sexual assault complaints and people might say that’s because of a lack of evidence, but that doesn’t really correlate because we also simultaneously have the highest rate of sexual assault in the country.”

In Alice Springs hundreds of people gathered on the court lawns in support of the movement, and demanded “enough is enough”.

Alice Springs town councillor Catherine Satour asked: What hope do we have as a country if Parliament House can’t support women?”.

“What message does that send to others victims, to predators, to communities, to people working in organisationa in the front line dealing with women who are victims of sexual assault?”.

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NT Working Womens Shelter’s Claire Pirrett, said today was “a conversation not the solution”.

“The solution is the dismantling of systemic structural sexism and gender inequality,” she said.

“We need those that benefit from it - mostly white men, to be advocates and support the changes of laws, policies, procedures and societal norms that gave them these advantages in the first place.”