Victorian state election 2026
Where a woman lives should not decide whether she is safe, healthy and heard.
Women's Health in the South East has served Melbourne's Southern Metropolitan Region since 1992. We work across ten councils, from Port Phillip to Cardinia and the Mornington Peninsula, and we are one of twelve women's health services in Victoria.
Here is what we are asking of the next Victorian Parliament, and the evidence behind it.
Averages hide the problem.
The most useful thing we can tell a candidate about their community is usually not the headline number. It is the pattern underneath it. Our region's overall figures look reasonable because affluent councils pull them up. Present the region as an average and the spread inside it disappears.
| Measure | Across our region | Victorian rate for women |
| Recorded family violence Incidents per 10,000 women, 2024 | Bayside 51.5 Frankston 166.3 | 134.6 |
| Adolescent birth rate Births per 1,000 women aged 13 to 19, 2019 to 2020 | Glen Eira 1.1 Greater Dandenong 10.6 WHISE region 5.2 | 8.2 |
| Unable to see a GP when needed Adults across the region, 2023 | Women 21.1 per cent Men 14.6 per cent | 22.7 per cent |
Family violence and adolescent birth data: Victorian Women's Health Atlas, drawing on Victoria Police Crime Statistics Agency data, 2024. Rates cannot be averaged or totalled across councils.
GP access data: Victorian Population Health Survey 2023, published at whole of region level. Survey estimates cannot be compared between councils and should not be mixed with the administrative figures above.
A low recorded rate is not the same as low incidence. In a high income council, a low family violence rate is as likely to reflect barriers to reporting as it is to reflect less violence. Prevention needs to be funded on that basis.
We hold this data by local government area and can prepare a briefing for any district in the region.
Three things we want every candidate in our region to know.
The Southern Metropolitan Region is one of the most economically and culturally varied regions in Australia. It contains some of Victoria's wealthiest suburbs and some of its fastest growing outer suburbs, where services have not kept pace with population.
Access is uneven, and that is a design problem
A service that is technically available in the region can still be unaffordable, hard to reach by public transport, culturally unsafe or simply too far away. Where a woman lives shapes her safety, her health outcomes and the services she can reach. These are funding and planning decisions, not individual choices.
Health promotion is essential work
Since 1992 we have coordinated women's health responses across this region, reaching women before crisis and illness. That work does not generate a hospital activity number. It does reduce demand on hospitals, courts and crisis services over time.
Prevention is infrastructure
State investment has let us build long term regional partnerships connecting councils, health services and community organisations. Funding for that infrastructure lapses in June 2027. Without a decision, the partnerships come apart and take years to rebuild.
| WHISE is working towards a region where equality is a reality for everyone, and where every woman and girl can be safe, healthy and thriving. We seek to work in partnership with stakeholders who share our vision, values and commitment to creating a stronger, more equitable community. |
Our asks sit alongside the statewide platform of the Women's Health Services Network, of which Women's Health in the South East is a member. The network is calling for sustained investment in women's health infrastructure, including the funding that lapses in June 2027, and for a statewide navigation service for women's health. What we set out above is what that investment looks like on the ground in the Southern Metropolitan Region.
What we are asking of the next Victorian Government
Three asks. Each one is about keeping infrastructure that already exists and already works, and making sure what comes next is built on evidence from this region rather than a statewide average.
One. Continue funding for Women's Health in the South East beyond June 2027
Current funding protects regional health promotion and the primary prevention infrastructure that stops family violence, improves sexual and reproductive health, supports mental wellbeing and reduces chronic disease for women in the south east. It lapses in June 2027.
What we are asking for: funding continued at current levels beyond June 2027, with certainty in the 2027 to 2028 State Budget.
Two. Provide protected, ongoing funding for the Victorian Women's Health and Wellbeing Program
This program funds the work that reaches women where they already are: menopause support groups with interpreters for migrant and refugee women, cervical screening taken into libraries and neighbourhood houses, referral pathways built across community health and councils, and a medical abortion clinic established with Peninsula Health.
What we are asking for: ongoing, protected funding, rather than short cycle renewal that makes long term prevention work impossible to plan.
Three. Build health programs and policy from intersectional data and lived experience leadership
Programs designed on statewide averages keep missing the women furthest from services. Regional data, alongside leadership from women with lived experience, is what makes a program land in Pakenham as well as it lands in Prahran.
What we are asking for: a commitment that existing and future health programs and policy affecting women in our region are designed using intersectional data and lived experience leadership.
| On the statewide platform WHISE is a member of the Women's Health Services Network and supports the network's statewide 2026 election platform, including its calls for sustained investment in women's health and a statewide women's health navigation service. The network platform is available to download below. |
What the investment delivers.
We lead two regional strategies, both built with partners and both running to 2030. Promoting Respect and Equity Together is the region's strategy for preventing gender-based violence. Good Health Down South is the region's strategy for sexual and reproductive health. Both currently rely on funding that ends in June 2027.
| Figure | Label |
| 60 | partner organisations engaged in regional violence prevention work |
| 44 | primary prevention projects delivered by those partners |
| 9,600+ | community members reached through those projects |
| 3,543 | people attended capacity building we led |
Source: WHISE Progress Report and Budget Acquittal 2025 to 2026.
The limit on our reach is funding
We more than tripled our reach this year on essentially flat resourcing, by working through partners and co-funders rather than by doing more ourselves. That is the model working as designed. It has also taken us to a capacity ceiling. We now receive more requests for community work than we can meet, and we decline work that sits squarely within our remit and that we know would be effective.
Family violence is rising
Family violence affects one in five Victorian women and remains the leading contributor to preventable death, disability and illness for women aged 15 to 44. Across the five councils of Cardinia, Casey, Frankston, Greater Dandenong and Kingston, Victoria Police recorded 12,104 family violence incidents in 2024 where the affected family member was a woman. A child was present at 4,688 of them.
Prevention is the only part of the system designed to reduce that demand rather than absorb it.
Working with men and boys
Rigid expectations about how men should behave harm men as well as women. Our work is about structures and settings, not about blaming individuals. Our partners have asked us to do more of this, particularly with men from multicultural communities.
| If anything here raises concerns for you or someone you know 1800RESPECT is available on 1800 737 732. Safe Steps, the Victorian family violence response line, is available on 1800 015 188. In an emergency, call 000. |
Two women, the same pain.
Where a woman lives in our region directly affects the care she can get. The following is a composite example drawn from documented patterns, not from any individual woman.
| Woman one | Woman two |
| She has carried the same pain since she was fifteen. She lives in one of the inner councils of the region. She has had the same doctor since childhood, so she has never had to start her story over. The gynaecologist was twenty minutes away, and she could pay the gap and take the morning off work. She was diagnosed with endometriosis at twenty-six. | She lives in Pakenham. She has the same pain, from the same age. She sees a different doctor most visits, so the story restarts each time. The nearest specialist is a long trip and a longer wait, because services sit where they have been funded. Every appointment costs a day of unpaid leave and the fare. Somewhere along the way her pain is read as stress, and her mental health becomes the explanation rather than the consequence. She is diagnosed about ten years later, in an emergency department. |
On paper, both women live in a region with access to reproductive healthcare. In practice, both waited around ten years for a diagnosis, and Woman Two carried extra barriers the whole way. What separates them is continuity of care, distance, the gap fee, and whether anyone locally is funded to help her navigate. Those are funding decisions.
| Support Lifeline 13 11 14. Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636. 1800RESPECT 1800 737 732. |
The data behind this, yours to use.
Candidates, campaign staff, partners and journalists are welcome to download and share any of these. If you need data for a district that is not covered, or in another format, contact us and we will prepare it.
- Women's health data snapshot: Southern Metropolitan Region
- Women's health data snapshot: South East Metropolitan Region
- Women's health data snapshot: Eastern Victorian Region
- Women's Health in the South East: our work
WHISE is a member of the Women's Health Services Network (WHSN) a collective group of the 12 Victorian Women's Health Services who have developed two key asks across the State, and which are tailored and targeted in each region. You can download the WHSN Victorian asks on the website here.
What we offer candidates and their offices.
- A clear overview of WHISE’s work, impact and regional insights.
- Evidence-based briefings tailored to the electorate and region.
- Connections with local organisations leading the work.
- Opportunities to visit programs in practice.
- Trusted, non-partisan advice and straightforward answers.
| Get in touch The WHISE Team would appreciate the opportunity to meet with you. Please get in touch. |
Women's Health in the South East is funded by the Victorian Government under the Victorian Women's Health Program and the Women's Capacity Building Program.
Page last updated 24.08.2026