Brittany Higgins has demanded urgent action from Australia's leaders on violence against women, accusing senior politicians of dodging accountability.
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The former Liberal staffer, who alleges she was raped by a colleague in a ministerial office in 2019, made a rousing speech to thousands of people at the Canberra March4Justice on Monday.
"We fundamentally recognise the system is broken, the glass ceiling is still in place and there are significant failings in the power structures within our institutions," Ms Higgins said.
"We are here because it is unfathomable that we are still having to fight this same stale, tired fight."
Ms Higgins quit her job as a media adviser and went public hoping she could protect other women from traumatic workplace incidents.
"We've all learned over the past few weeks just how common gendered violence is in this country," she said.
"It's time our leaders on both sides of politics stop avoiding the public and side-stepping accountability. It's time we actually address the problem."
She spent recent weeks in a spare bedroom in her father's Gold Coast apartment watching the news around her play out.
"I watched as the prime minister of Australia publicly apologised to me through the media, while privately his media team actively undermined and discredited my loved ones," she said.
Ms Higgins was waking to new information about the alleged assault which has haunted her.
"I watched as people hid behind throwaway phrases like 'due process' and 'presumption of innocence' while failing to acknowledge how the justice system is notoriously stacked against victims of sexual crime."
Organisers of the rallies, which saw thousands of people march in cities across the country, rejected the prime minister's offer to meet behind closed doors.
Mr Morrison refused to attend the protest, but about 15 coalition MPs and senators went outside to hear the speeches.
The prime minister said he respected the organisers' decision not to meet him, outlining to parliament actions towards violence against women his government had already announced.
Mr Morrison said the march was a "triumph of democracy".
"Not far from here such marches, even now, are being met with bullets, but not here in this country," he said.
Mr Morrison's speech fired up Labor leader Anthony Albanese who had attended the rally with a strong contingent of party colleagues, along with the Greens and independents.
"What I saw outside was passionate women who are angry," he said.
"They are angry about what's happened to them, they're angry about what's happened to their mothers, their grandmothers, their sisters, their daughters and their granddaughters."
Women's March4Justice founder Janine Hendry said the prime minister's offer of a meeting with just three women was not enough.
Australian of the Year Grace Tame addressed the Hobart rally about her advocacy for other victims of sexual assault.
"Evil thrives in silence. Behaviour unspoken, behaviour ignored, is behaviour endorsed," she said.
The rallies are being held to protest the unacceptable treatment of women in the workplace and the community, and the right of women to feel safe.
Attorney-General Christian Porter launched defamation action against the ABC and one of its journalists about an hour before the Canberra rally kicked off.
He is suing the broadcaster and Louise Milligan for publishing "false accusations" against him in an online story that claimed he was the subject of historical rape allegations.
Australian Associated Press
