Speaker 1: So, guys, it's a very important week.
Speaker 2: This week it is Anti Street Harassment Week and the
Speaker 2: good people at Lorel Paris are committed to ending street
Speaker 2: harassment through their bystander Intervention training in partnership with Plan International.
Speaker 2: Now you can take the training Lorelparis dot com dot
Speaker 2: au forward slash stand up has all the details. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: for our next guest, he knows firsthand how important talking
Speaker 2: about this sort of subject is. Terrang is joining us
Speaker 2: on the air, and back in twenty fifteen, you lost
Speaker 2: your youngest sister, she was murdered by her husband. May
Speaker 2: thank you for being here. Firstly, no, thank you for
Speaker 2: having me on. It's such an important thing to talk about.
Speaker 2: And the fact that you guys here at Nova are
Speaker 2: willing to have these conversations difficult ones, right, challenging ones
Speaker 2: is just so profound and important and I think it's
Speaker 2: a really big deal.
Speaker 1: So thanks for having me here.
Speaker 3: I mean, it is so hard to talk about.
Speaker 4: These conversations are hard to talk about because I think
Speaker 4: you don't want to know about it. People want to
Speaker 4: bury their head in the sand about these really hard
Speaker 4: topics because we'd prefer that they weren't happening. But the reality,
Speaker 4: and especially for your family, is that we have a
Speaker 4: serious issue out there in this country, don't we.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we've got a serious issue, right, And this whole
Speaker 5: thing about whether it's street harassment on one hand or
Speaker 5: the more extreme like you know what happened to my sister,
Speaker 5: they're all connected, right, They're on like a continent, They're
Speaker 5: on a line basically right where we think some of
Speaker 5: the stuff that might just be harmless, like just making
Speaker 5: a joke, stuff that we pass off as banter, cat calling,
Speaker 5: maybe groping someone on a night out, we think that's
Speaker 5: not related, right, And most people who do that stuff
Speaker 5: aren't going to go and do something awful, right. We
Speaker 5: know that, right, we know that, and no one's suggesting that.
Speaker 5: But at the same time, we can't turn a blind
Speaker 5: eye to the stuff that we have for a long time,
Speaker 5: especially Ossie Blokes, I think we sometimes just like to
Speaker 5: pass it off like, oh, I was just a joke,
Speaker 5: just having a bit of banter, you know. But when
Speaker 5: our sisters, our moms, our cousins, our friends are going
Speaker 5: through life, you know, changing their plans, changing where they're going,
Speaker 5: changing their whole life around, in fear of being harassed
Speaker 5: you know, out in the street. One in two Australian
Speaker 5: women right report that they will change their plans for
Speaker 5: fear of being harassed. And I love to ask blokes
Speaker 5: that same question, do you change your life plans because
Speaker 5: of that the same fear?
Speaker 1: And no one says yes, Because we men.
Speaker 5: Go through the world very very differently, right, And I
Speaker 5: think that's the important part of the conversation that a
Speaker 5: lot of Ozzie men need to be willing to have.
Speaker 5: And that's not saying that men are bad or that
Speaker 5: we've all done something awful, but just the fact that
Speaker 5: we want to be better. We want a society where
Speaker 5: things are safe.
Speaker 3: I mean, but what is considered street harassment? What is it?
Speaker 3: Because it's easy to like put an umbrella on something
Speaker 3: like that, but what is it?
Speaker 5: Yes, So the stats tell us that seventy eight percent
Speaker 5: of Australian women have experienced threet harassment, right, So we
Speaker 5: take that in context, right, that's eight in ten women
Speaker 5: have teal us that they've experienced it. And it counts
Speaker 5: the whole spectrum of behavior, whether it's cat calling, you know,
Speaker 5: like when it's shouting out to them on the street,
Speaker 5: whether it's staring at them, groping, making unwonted comments about
Speaker 5: their physical appearance or their body. Those sorts of things
Speaker 5: are all part of street harassment, right, So.
Speaker 4: It's strangers, it's it's strangers making women feel uncomfortable through
Speaker 4: their behavior.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And it can even be it can even be
Speaker 5: people that you know making you feel uncomfortable through forms
Speaker 5: of like harassment or unwanted comments at work, at.
Speaker 2: Work in a social environment, absolutely include sort of people
Speaker 2: who are not trying to do it intentionally. And what
Speaker 2: I mean by that is, like, I know my wife
Speaker 2: the other night, she walked down the street to the
Speaker 2: shops to get something, and she came back before even
Speaker 2: getting to the shops, and she goes, look, I'm not
Speaker 2: saying this guy was going to do anything, but he
Speaker 2: was just walking incredibly close behind me and he probably
Speaker 2: didn't realize how awkward or scared it was making me.
Speaker 1: But just in the current environment here in.
Speaker 4: Melbourne, well, I think as a female though, there is
Speaker 4: part of us that doesn't want to judge that kind
Speaker 4: of behavior, but it's this other type of behavior that
Speaker 4: has made us uneasy in the first place often, if
Speaker 4: that makes sense. So he might have just been a
Speaker 4: man also walking to the shop, and you do think,
Speaker 4: oh god, this.
Speaker 3: Guy's following me. He's actually just going to the shops too.
Speaker 4: But in the back of our minds, we're so alert
Speaker 4: right now that that stuff frightens us too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's the thing, right, That's exactly as you said, Lauren,
Speaker 5: you're so alert to it, right because you're worried about
Speaker 5: what could happen. And for a lot of guys, we
Speaker 5: don't go through the world like that, right, we'd want
Speaker 5: the same for all the women in our lives, right,
Speaker 5: That's what a lot of the good men will tell
Speaker 5: me that I don't want the women that I know,
Speaker 5: or any woman to have to go through life feeling scared, right,
Speaker 5: just trying to get to the shops. You know, these
Speaker 5: are basic every day dare I say, their money? They're
Speaker 5: boring things that we have to do every day, right,
Speaker 5: And if you're self selecting out of that because you're
Speaker 5: worried about what could happen, it's just an awful reality
Speaker 5: to live in. And this is happening to seventy eight
Speaker 5: percent of Austrange women. So I'm really proud to support
Speaker 5: Laurel in this training so that people who witness street
Speaker 5: harassment actually know what they can do to safely intervene.
Speaker 5: You're confident that if if there was an incident, say
Speaker 5: below us on the street, that it would be called out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I hope.
Speaker 5: So, you know, I think, like, how far we still
Speaker 5: got to go. We've got I mean, we've got a
Speaker 5: long way to go in the sense because can I
Speaker 5: hand on heart, Yeah, I don't think it would be
Speaker 5: what don't you think? I just don't think blokes generally
Speaker 5: speaking would would I mean, I would like to think
Speaker 5: it would be called out, But I still think we've
Speaker 5: got such a long way to go that more blokes.
Speaker 3: As a bystanding you would turn a blind eye.
Speaker 1: Yeah, look, especially if they heard something. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Look, it sort of depends on what the behavior is.
Speaker 5: There's sort of things where like if someone physically touches
Speaker 5: someone right.
Speaker 1: Of course everyone would go running back.
Speaker 5: You know, there's kind of but there's kind of instances
Speaker 5: where we know, we've seen, we've been in situations we're
Speaker 5: out on a night out or something, someone gets a
Speaker 5: bit rowdy, bit handsy, and people like, hey mate, yes, right,
Speaker 5: we've been in those situations. It's some of the more
Speaker 5: subtle stuff like that. Well, the stuff that might even
Speaker 5: just be passed off as a joke right there, the
Speaker 5: kind of banter, the cat calling or whatever. And we've
Speaker 5: all we can all recognize as soon as I talk
Speaker 5: about it, that we've seen a situation where we've watched
Speaker 5: on as men, and we've seen how it makes that
Speaker 5: women feel. We know that look of discomfort or that
Speaker 5: kind of like fake laughing along to just try to
Speaker 5: make the situation not get any more intense or not
Speaker 5: kind of resist in order to make things more uncomfortable
Speaker 5: for them, Right, And so I think you might be right, Clint.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: And so I think what's so important is, as you
Speaker 5: were saying before, Jase, that that training at Laurel Paris
Speaker 5: dot com forward such stand up. It's so so important
Speaker 5: because it's giving people practical ways to intervene.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: I think that one of the things, one of the
Speaker 5: things about why we don't do it is that a
Speaker 5: lot of men don't know.
Speaker 1: What to do. That's exactly it.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: I'll go around the country and there's men that will
Speaker 5: come up to me and say I want to do something,
Speaker 5: but I don't know what to do, right, And this
Speaker 5: training gives them what's called the five d's right, five
Speaker 5: tactical evidence base proven things that work right. One of them,
Speaker 5: for example, is distracting in a situation. Right, if you
Speaker 5: see something happen, you can distract away from the actual
Speaker 5: street harassment and intervene. Another one, which is so powerful
Speaker 5: to me is we've always got our phones. Like I
Speaker 5: can't go anywhere with a without my iPhone, right, most
Speaker 5: people can't. And so if you see something you can
Speaker 5: document that. You can just take a little sneaky video, right,
Speaker 5: And that way the person who is targeted can use
Speaker 5: it later if they choose to report, if they want
Speaker 5: to actually take further action. So you're doing a bit
Speaker 5: to support a lot of us. Men think that our
Speaker 5: job is intervening, is only calling out, right, is being
Speaker 5: the knight and shining armor, coming in, swooping in to
Speaker 5: do the heavy lifting, rescue the woman in distress. But
Speaker 5: there's so many other ways that we can get involved.
Speaker 5: And I think that's what's so powerful about this particular
Speaker 5: training that Lorel Paris is running.
Speaker 3: So what are the other d's.
Speaker 5: Okay, So the five d's in total, distract, delegate, document, direct,
Speaker 5: and delay, right, And so we've spoken about a couple
Speaker 5: of them, or already. I think delegates one that's really
Speaker 5: really important. You know, like if you're particularly if you're
Speaker 5: a young person and you see this happen, say you're like,
Speaker 5: you see this happen like after school or something, right,
Speaker 5: you can you can delegate by getting a teacher.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: You can delegate by getting someone in a position of authority.
Speaker 5: So you see a cop right nearby, right, you ask
Speaker 5: clean about the street downstairs?
Speaker 1: You can get it, you know, get.
Speaker 5: Someone in authority involvement, yeah, right, get someone with clout,
Speaker 5: Like if you're down the footy club someone says something
Speaker 5: that's a bit out of pocket, you can get like
Speaker 5: someone who's you know, a lifer at the club who
Speaker 5: everyone listens to to come in and go hey mate,
Speaker 5: that's that's like, we don't do that here.
Speaker 3: So this is training anyone can do.
Speaker 1: Anyone, anyone in Australia.
Speaker 5: It's absolutely free, takes you like ten to fifteen minutes tops,
Speaker 5: and it will mean that anytime you see this, first
Speaker 5: you'll know what the kind of signs are. Secondly you'll
Speaker 5: know what to do, which I think is so so
Speaker 5: powerful touring.
Speaker 1: Your sister would be incredibly proud of you doing this.
Speaker 2: I know, a lot of people, if they're in your situation,
Speaker 2: would just crumble, and you know, and that'd be it.
Speaker 1: Like what was she like? Was a sister annoying? No? No,
Speaker 1: she was lovely.
Speaker 5: She was And you know, I've met a lot of
Speaker 5: families who've lost loved ones in similar circumstances.
Speaker 1: I've also that met so many people.
Speaker 5: You know, it's not hard to when eight and ten
Speaker 5: women have been subjected to street harassment. A lot of
Speaker 5: the people that have subjected to this are such nice,
Speaker 5: kind people.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: It's almost like others want to take advantage of that
Speaker 5: niceness and kindness, and it's a hard you know, life's
Speaker 5: hard sometimes, right, and I think that some of the
Speaker 5: nicest people are the ones getting taken advantage of the
Speaker 5: much She was just such a kind, generous, sweet person,
Speaker 5: And you know, I remember really fondly and I wish
Speaker 5: she was still here, and I wish all the other
Speaker 5: women that have suffered the same fate were still here.
Speaker 5: But it's sort of a reminder that it's not a
Speaker 5: bad thing to just be a kind of nice person
Speaker 5: that cares about other people in the community.
Speaker 1: Well, she'd be.
Speaker 2: Very very proud of you, putting your name and face
Speaker 2: to this campaign. Look, you can go online Lorelparis dot com,
Speaker 2: dot forward, slash stand up.
Speaker 4: More than three point seven million people have already been
Speaker 4: trained through this program, which is awesome.
Speaker 2: Yeah and like you said, what ten minutes, ten fifteen tops. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's bloody important. Hey, thank you so much for
Speaker 2: coming in this morning. Thank you so much for having
Speaker 2: me