The Good Warrior

One of the most difficult truths to confront is that systems can appear responsive while remaining fundamentally unchanged.

I have long said that although I successfully delivered one of the country’s most significant and influential landmark legal cases, that victory did not automatically translate into cultural change. That is still something that needs to be challenged, examined and continuously worked towards.

Because systems are not transformed by rulings alone. They are transformed by what people are willing to confront, question and refuse to normalise afterwards.

We have become highly fluent in the language of reform. Lived experience. Co design. Trauma informed practice. Awareness. Advocacy. Consultation.

But language alone does not redistribute power. Real reform is uncomfortable because it requires more than visibility. It requires individuals, institutions and industries to examine what they protect, who they elevate, whose voices are filtered out, and whether outcomes are actually changing for the people most impacted.

One of the reasons I continue speaking about bystander culture is because systems do not sustain themselves alone. They are sustained socially. Through silence, career incentives, reputation management and the normalisation of inaction.

Progress is not measured by how many conversations we hold. It is measured by what changes because of them. It is one of the many reasons I wrote my book and chose to share my experience so deeply.

Thank you to Third Sector News for the opportunity to contribute to this important conversation. I genuinely enjoyed this interview.

We are fluent in buzzwords: lived experience, co-design, trauma-informed practice. We run the consultations and build the frameworks. But as Jo Cooper points out, “Systems can absorb critique without changing, particularly when that critique is channelled into safe, repeatable formats.”

For NFP leaders and boards, this is a confronting but necessary insight. Are we sustaining the appearance of progress while the underlying power dynamics remain completely untouched? Are we allowing social impact to become a pathway for career advancement, rather than a commitment to systemic reform?

Moving from safe narrative to real accountability requires us to step out of the bystander role within our own sector.

Full story: https://tinyurl.com/2jsxkkna

With permission from The Good Warrior community, I have reached a point where I feel it is necessary to begin sharing the messages I receive. To give insight into what people are observing and feeling.

Because there is an increasing disconnect between those who claim to represent, research and respond to these issues, and those who are living them.

That disconnect is being felt in real time.

One message I received this week is one I hear often. Not because it was extreme, but because it was so familiar.

“…is it just because we’re not men? You’re not a man….do we need a man to represent Clare’s Law and then we’ll be heart. Srsly…?”

This is not an isolated sentiment. It is a pattern. A quiet but persistent question rising across communities already carrying the weight of harm.

And yet, there is a detail that complicates this assumption.

Throughout my campaign for a national domestic violence disclosure scheme, most of the politicians I have met with have been women. Women who, prior to being elected, positioned themselves as advocates for the safety and protection of other women. Women who spoke with conviction about prevention, reform and change.

Which raises a more difficult question.

If the issue is understood, if the lived experience has been heard, and if the authority to act sits within those very rooms, why does nothing structurally change?

At some point, the question shifts. It is no longer about representation in the way we have been taught to understand it. It becomes about what systems do to people once they enter them.

Because what the community is witnessing is not a lack of awareness. It is a lack of action.

Systems that absorb urgency and return process. Systems that acknowledge harm but defer responsibility. Systems where prevention is spoken about repeatedly yet rarely implemented in a way that alters outcomes.

And from the outside, watching this cycle repeat, the conclusion becomes increasingly difficult to ignore.
If those who claim to represent the issue are not advancing it, then who will?

Do we need a man to be heard?

It is a question that should not exist. But it does.

And its existence is not a reflection of the community. It reflects the system they are observing.

So, the question that now needs to be asked is not about gender, but about leadership.

Who, within our political system, is willing to move beyond language and into implementation? Who is prepared to take a national disclosure scheme, backed by more than 133,000

Australians, off the shelf and into reality?

Because the community is no longer asking for acknowledgement. They are asking for action.

And the longer that delay continues, the more questions like this will keep rising, until they can no longer be ignored.

David Pocock maybe you can help?

Michelle Rowland MP

As International Women’s Day (IWD) comes to a close, I want to start with something that sits deeply with me.

“Good enough” has never been a standard I am comfortable with. Perhaps that comes from my North African heritage and the global lens it has given me. When I look beyond our borders, I see women in my father’s home of Sudan, in my mother’s home of Egypt, and across the globe who are still losing their lives to systemic failures.

The idea that progress should be measured by what is merely acceptable or politically comfortable feels deeply insufficient. Being called controversial will never deter me.

Throughout this week I have written about courage, power, recognition and the Matilda Effect. Each reflection points to the same underlying truth.
Balancing the scales requires more than symbolic support. More than panels that continue to platform the same voices while claiming the banner of diversity and inclusion. It requires action.

That is particularly true when it comes to prevention. For years I have advocated for preventative solutions across multiple sectors, but the resistance to a domestic violence disclosure scheme known as Clare’s Law has been one of the most confronting examples of how systems fail the very people they claim to protect.

The purpose of the scheme is simple: to provide people with access to information that could help them assess risk and protect themselves from harm. Prevention is not theoretical. It is practical.

So let me say something directly.

Every person in a position of influence who has obstructed, delayed or ignored these preventative measures shares responsibility for the consequences of that inaction.

What is particularly disturbing is that many of those with the power to support this are themselves women. Women in government. Women in academia. Women leading government funded organisations. Journalists who have built careers reporting on violence against women, many without lived experience.
Yet their influence has been enough to stall a preventative measure that more than 133,000 people, many of them victim survivors, have called for.

Leadership is not measured by statements.

It is measured by the decisions we make when lives depend on them. IWD reminds us of the progress that has been made. But symbolic recognition is not the same as meaningful change.

Balancing the scales requires us to listen to diverse voices. It requires us to open doors rather than quietly keep them closed to protect comfortable hierarchies. It requires us to support the people who challenge systems, not distance ourselves from them.

Discomfort is a very small price to pay for safety.

This week has been about reflection, because progress cannot be built on panels and applause alone. Reflection only matters if it leads to action.
Balancing the scales is not a moment

If you truly care about balancing the scales, choose courage over comfort.

Because comfort has never saved a life.

For my second last reflection this week, as we look at the International Women’s Day theme of balancing the scales, I want to talk about a concept many have never heard of, but once you see it, you begin to notice it everywhere.

The Matilda Effect.

It describes the systematic tendency for women’s ideas and leadership to be overlooked or quietly reassigned once their contributions become accepted as part of the story of progress.

Named by historian Margaret W. Rossiter in 1993, the term honours the earlier observations of 19th century activist Matilda Joslyn Gage, who documented how women repeatedly fueled breakthroughs only for recognition to drift elsewhere.

But Gage’s own story reveals the most uncomfortable layer of this effect. She was not only erased by men. She was written out of history by her own colleagues because her ideas were considered too difficult for the mainstream.

It is tempting to believe this belonged to another era, a time of closed doors and formal exclusion.

But the Matilda Effect did not disappear. It evolved.

Today it rarely appears as outright dismissal. It shows up in the way we sanitise change.

A woman leads a radical shift and her role is gradually minimised.
A woman challenges a system and the narrative moves away from the issue and toward her personality or credibility.
A woman breaks the ground, but a more palatable figure is chosen to stand on it.

Over time the progress remains, but the origin becomes blurred. The controversial woman is edited out and the digestible version is retold.

Historically this was driven by male dominated institutions. Today the picture is more complex. Sometimes the very cultures that once excluded women now encourage us to value respectability over the raw courage it takes to demand change.

The Matilda Effect is no longer only about men overlooking women. It can also appear when we fail to recognise the women who challenge the very systems we have learned to navigate.

It is a timely reminder. Balancing the scales is about more than representation. It is about recognition and inclusion.

Progress is often remembered. The people who carried it there are not always remembered as clearly, and we should always ask why.

Perhaps balancing the scales in the 21st century asks something more of all of us. Not only to challenge injustice, but to consciously recognise the courage of those who do.

If you are ever asked to speak about someone else’s work because you are considered more palatable, decline.

Taking credit for the courage of another does not rebalance the scales.
It keeps them weighted. Real progress requires us to resist rewriting difficult change into a comfortable narrative.

And to make sure the people who carried the weight of progress are not quietly edited out once the system adjusts.

Recognition, when given freely and honestly, does more than rebalance history.

It reshapes culture.

Would you sacrifice your dreams to pursue justice?

Ancient philosophers distinguished between hedonia, the pursuit of pleasure, and eudaimonia, a life aligned with deeper purpose and virtue. It is a distinction that sounds abstract until life places you at a crossroads where comfort and conscience begin to pull in different directions.

Because the pursuit of justice is rarely the comfortable path. In fact, it often asks us to step away from the life we thought we were building.

As the years unfolded, the cost of continuing to ask that question became clearer. Time. Energy. Peace. Dreams temporarily placed to the side. It is a choice many people quietly face when they encounter injustice. Do we step forward, or do we return to the comfort of our own lives and hope someone else will carry the weight?

Philosophers from Aristotle to Kant to Rawls have offered frameworks for thinking about justice and responsibility. But in the end the decision to act is not theoretical. It is deeply personal.

That realisation is also where The Good Warrior was born. Not from a courtroom, but from a simple observation. When systems fail, balance rarely returns on its own. It shifts because someone decides that what they are witnessing matters enough to question.

Governance failures, abuse of power, domestic violence, bullying, tyranny of the majority. You may see different issues, but the same underlying moment connects them. A person standing at the intersection between comfort and courage, deciding which path to take.

The Good Warrior is a purpose-led ecosystem using storytelling, music and education to transform bystanders into courageous changemakers who challenge abuse of power and rebalance the systems that shape our world.
Many people believe they cannot change the world. I disagree completely. You cannot claim to care about the world while ignoring the injustices right in front of you. There are countless opportunities for courage around us every day. A stranger. A neighbour. A colleague. A friend. A family member.

Change rarely begins with grand gestures. It begins with the willingness to care about what happens close to us. Distance often makes injustice easier to talk about or care about, but courage begins the moment we decide it matters close to home as well.

Which brings us back to the theme of this week. Balancing the scales. So I’ll leave you with the same question that has followed me throughout this journey.

When justice and self interest diverge, what guides your choice?

I have walked this road before.

When I challenged the strata establishment over unchecked power and unconstrained by-law authority, I was told the framework was sufficient, that reform required further consultation, that existing processes already protected fairness. The language was calm and administrative, designed to sound complete. It was not.

I did not set out to litigate. I was forced there by a system unwilling to examine itself. 6.5 years later, the Court of Appeal confirmed what I had been advocating: the system was too broad, majorities were harming minorities, and constraints were necessary. Consultation had not been the issue. The evidence had not been the issue. The issue was resistance to disruption. Power rarely yields because it is persuaded; it yields because it must.

A second response from Michelle Rowland MP suggesting that the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children “aims to deliver the intended benefits” of a Disclosure Scheme. The phrasing is familiar. Aims to deliver. Intended benefits. Bureaucracy has a talent for softening urgency until it no longer feels urgent at all.

Strengthening information sharing between agencies is not the same as allowing a person to ask whether someone they are dating has a documented history of violence. Pilots are not informed consent. Frameworks are not transparency. Information withheld in the name of caution does not remain harmless; it transfers the risk elsewhere.

South Australia already operates a disclosure scheme. It has been reviewed. It functions. International models exist. The evidence is not hypothetical. Yet the reflex remains the same: extend the process, temper the urgency, defer the disruption. This is how institutions protect themselves. Reform is first described as unnecessary, then as already addressed, then as too complex. Only after advocates turn their lives upside down and do the work, does it become common sense. By then, harm has already done its work. Time, in these moments, is not abstract. It belongs to someone’s daughter, someone’s brother, someone’s future.

Prevention should be an immediate decision about whether transparency is allowed to exist before tragedy forces it. Prevention asks a simple question: do we act when we know enough, or only when we can no longer deny what we knew?

133,223 Australians have asked for this disclosure scheme, during what has been declared a national crisis.

A procedural response may fulfil a formal obligation, but it does not fulfil prevention. Leadership is not measured by consultation cycles or strategic plans; it is measured by moral clarity. Moral clarity is uncomfortable because it requires choosing disruption over delay.

Clare’s Law is highly effective in South Australia, with evidence available. If we declare violence a national crisis, then national courage must follow.

I have lived this pattern before, we must act before inevitability becomes obituary.

Christmas Eve Reflection & Gratitude

On Christmas Eve, as people travel, arrive, gather, and prepare to be with those they love, I want to pause and say thank you.

This year, many of you chose not to stay silent. You spoke when it would have been easier to look away. You offered support without spectacle. You stood alongside others not because it was popular, but because it was right.
I do not take that lightly.

The Good Warrior has never been about noise or numbers. It has always been about courage at the human level, the quiet decisions made when no one is watching. The moment someone says, this isn’t okay, even when their voice shakes. The moment a bystander becomes a protector. The moment a community chooses integrity over convenience.

This work begins with people willing to be visible early. People who understand that culture is shaped not by sameness, but by difference, lived experience, and care.

Support does not always look like agreement. Sometimes it looks like presence. Sometimes it looks like belief. Sometimes it looks like someone standing beside you and saying, you’re not imagining this.

To those who have shared their stories, offered encouragement, challenged systems, or stayed when things became uncomfortable, thank you. Your actions matter more than you may realise. They ripple outward in ways you will likely never see.

As we enter a season that centres home, safety, and togetherness, may we remember this, communities are not built by rules alone. They are built by people willing to care, to speak, and to act with courage when it counts.

Wishing you and those you love a peaceful and Merry Christmas, with moments of rest, warmth, and reflection, blessings we so often forget to name.

History shows us this pattern again and again.

When leadership becomes reactive rather than principled, societies do not become safer. They become volatile.

Reactive leadership does three things, every time.

First, it amplifies fringe behaviour by granting it oxygen. What should remain marginal is elevated through repetition, outrage, and spectacle. Fear becomes content. Provocation becomes currency.

Second, it collapses moral complexity into tribal binaries. Communities are flattened into caricatures. Identity becomes a proxy for blame. Once that happens, people stop seeing one another as neighbours and start seeing one another as symbols.

Third, it erodes trust in institutions meant to protect cohesion. When warnings are issued without equal emphasis on responsibility, restraint, and unity, the public absorbs anxiety without guidance. Fear, left unmanaged, seeks expression.

None of this is new.

Periods of social fracture are rarely triggered by a single event. They are cultivated through poor leadership habits: reacting instead of governing, chasing headlines instead of shaping culture, confusing visibility with authority.

Violence and intimidation directed at any community are unacceptable.

Leadership fails when fear is allowed to be weaponised against anyone.
Strong leadership does not inflame.

It contextualises.
It de-escalates.
It refuses to let hatred dictate the agenda.

The role of leaders, political, media, institutional, is not to mirror public emotion, but to steady it. To lower the temperature. To make clear that violence, intimidation, and racialised hatred are not debates to be indulged, nor spectacles to be circulated, but failures of civic responsibility.

When leaders abdicate that role, others fill the vacuum. Loud voices. Reckless actors. Those who benefit from chaos.

And the cost is always borne by ordinary people, walking down streets with more fear, not more safety.

If we are serious about preventing violence, we must stop confusing reaction with action.

Leadership is not about who speaks first. It is about who speaks wisely.
What you amplify, you legitimise. What you contextualise, you contain.

A nation in constant reaction is not being led.