Marg D'arcy for Kew
Marg D'arcy is the Labor candidate for Kew in the 2018 Victorian State Election. Marg was a beneficiary of the Whitlam education reforms. As a single mum she was able to be the first person in her family to go to University as a mature age student, achieving a BA in Politics and a Masters in Policy and Law.
Marg started her post-university career working in a women’s refuge in the early 80s. Her career in the sector spanned many achievements including establishing the Family Violence Project Office for Victoria Police, helping establish Men’s Referral Service, a telephone helpline for men concerned about their use of violence within the family, managing CASA House, the Centre Against Sexual Assault and Statewide Sexual Assault Crisis Line for the Royal Women's Hospital, and she was national convenor of the National Association of Services Against Sexual Violence in the early 2000s. Since 2007 Marg has been responsible for managing an integrated Child and Family Service for EACH Social and Community Health in the Outer East of Melbourne. This year Marg moved to a focus on Early Childhood Intervention Services (ECIS) and the transition to NDIS. She established an ECIS in the Act, an NDIS trial site and witnessed the changes in family’s lives as they are able to exercise a greater degree of choice and control and feel secure in being able to access supports for themselves and their child.
"I have worked for the rights of women and children for decades. In part, it is because of the work I have done in family violence and sexual assault, I have always believed that violence is a gendered issue and that men will not stop being violent towards women until women have increased representation in decision making, including Parliament, the rights to fair pay for fair work, paid maternity leave, reproductive rights so they can choose what to do with their own body, access to education and decent, quality childcare."