Today, Victorians will participate in yet another walk against gendered violence while the government repeats the same talking points but fails to take any meaningful action.

Today’s Walk Against Family Violence will mark the beginning of sixteen days of events and discussions seeking to prevent and eliminate violence against women and girls.

I’ve previously attended these walks, and others designed to achieve the same goals. The last was the No More rally in Melbourne earlier this year where Premier Jacinta Allan said governments needed to do more to prevent family violence. Ironic given she is the Premier.

Yet here we are months later, with another walk and no action. There are expert-endorsed measures relating to two high-risk issues that, if the government adopted them, would make a real difference to women’s safety. One is stalking law reform – the legacy of young Melbourne victim Celeste Manno, who was murdered by work colleague Luay Sako.

Manno’s brutal murder triggered an inquiry by the Victorian Law Reform Commission. As a result, 45 recommendations to strengthen stalking and harassment laws were submitted to the government in June 2022. They have been sitting on the Premier’s desk ever since.

There have been seven rallies calling for justice for Manno in the last two years – none of which have been attended by a member of the Andrews-Allan government, as far as we know. This is callous and inexcusable.

Then there is the loophole giving criminals reductions in their prison time because they were supposedly inconvenienced by Covid lockdowns.

One family told me about the murder of their daughter at the hands of her partner, leaving two children behind. While the grief caused by this act alone would be hard for many of us to comprehend, this poor family has been put through the wringer again and again by the actions and inactions of this government.

The man convicted of and sentenced for the murder has been one of the few beneficiaries of this government’s largess when it comes to Covid. He has received 427 days off his sentence and will now be released earlier than his original non-parole period.

These reductions, known as Emergency Management Days, were designed for extreme circumstances where prisoners were denied their normal entitlements or performed heroic acts, and were only intended for prisoners who demonstrated good behaviour.

However, because Covid was declared an emergency, all prisoners are now getting hundreds of days off their sentences. What’s worse is that these days were granted automatically with no consideration of the prisoner’s behaviour.

Now that it is clear that the government made a mistake by automatically granting EMDs to violent and high-risk offenders because of Covid lockdowns, they should fix it immediately.

This is something I asked the government to do in August and it’s a change it could make tomorrow. It would send a strong signal that the Victorian government takes women’s safety seriously and wants to see the perpetrators punished.

Last week, the Minister finally provided a disappointing and dismissive answer, which won’t change anything at all.

After years of participating in marches, repeating meaningless platitudes and making empty promises, it’s time for this government to deliver some results for women’s safety.