Women's safety champions want improvements to sexual consent education, regulated pornography, and guidelines for schools to respond to student perpetrators.
It can be as simple as asking a question, but for many Australians sexual consent is confusing, misunderstood or completely ignored.
A parliamentary committee is examining inconsistencies in consent laws across jurisdictions, the effectiveness of directions to juries about consent, impacts of existing laws on the survivor experience of the justice system, and adequacy of education programs.
Investigative journalist Jess Hill said there was no point having consent education in schools if there were not also guidelines for how they responded to victims and perpetrators, particularly those who were in the same year group.
But Ms Hill also said improving consent laws and education across the country would make little difference unless the government also regulated pornography.
"You've got almost half of Australians between the ages of nine and 16 who are being regularly exposed to porn," she said.
"It is hard to overstate just how damaging that is as a cultural education, particularly for young boys and men."
Teach us Consent founder Chanel Contos said young people were learning about sex from pornography.
"It's like learning how to drive a car by watching Formula One," she said.
"It's extremely unsafe, it's extremely dangerous and it is mainly young women who are being subjected to metaphorical car crashes."
One in five Australian women and one in 16 men over the age of 15 will or have experienced sexual violence in their lifetime.
Boys aged between 15 and 19 have the highest rates of offending of any age group.
But the number of Australians who believe women lie or exaggerate reports of abuse and rape is the highest in any Western nation.
Ms Hill advocated for young men to be included and encouraged to talk about sexual violence.
"There's a real risk at the moment where, in addressing consent and sexual violence, we end up stoking male resentment by not welcoming them into the conversation, in a way that they feel comfortable," she said.
The award-winning journalist created an SBS documentary series called Asking For It, with director Tosca Looby. The committee was played a short compilation from the series.
Asking For It aimed to clarify what consent meant, what happened when it was ignored, and how all Australians could benefit when messages about consent were delivered clearly and early in life.
Experts featured in the documentary called for children to be introduced to concepts of consent before they learn to read and write, in an age-appropriate context.
1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732)
National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028
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