It reached the requisite number of signatories to trigger a parliamentary debate on Wednesday afternoon,one day after the state government vowed tooverhaul sexual assault laws and introduce an “affirmative consent model”. The new laws will require a person to show they took active steps to find out if a person consented to sex.
As part of Tuesday’s announcement,Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said curriculum and teaching resources would be updated to reflect the changes in law.
“We already have consent in our curriculum,but we’ll make sure that the consent curriculum is updated to reflect these changes,and also ensure that our teachers have the resources that they need to make sure young people understand[the changes],” she said.
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“We’re also working through at the moment a review of the resources that are available to all of our teachers and making that much easier for them to access putting everything together in one place.”
That legal reform was one of the demands singled out by Ms Contos in herpetition. But the other requests - for consent to be taught earlier in the curriculum,and sex education to include topics such as victim blaming and queer sex - have not been addressed by the government.
“We request that consent is taught earlier to reduce the extent of sexual assault experiences amongst youth in New South Wales,” the petition states.