As a regulator, the Commission invests significant resources to support duty holders to comply. We do this by communicating regulatory information clearly, delivering timely feedback, and providing practical tools to assist duty holders. Compliance assessment has been a key feature of the Commission’s regulatory work this year.
Issuing compliance outcomes and feedback
Duty holders were required to submit an audit in December 2025, and gender equality action plans and progress reports in May 2026.
We issued tailored compliance outcome reports to all duty holders. These reports described compliance and data quality issues, outlined how organisations needed to address the issues, and provided advice on changes to audit requirements that will take effect in 2027. Our comprehensive feedback helps organisations build their understanding and supports continuous improvement.
We aim to issue compliance feedback within 5 months of obligation submissions. This ensures duty holders receive a timely response and can maintain momentum for their gender equality work. We met this target for 2025 audits. We assessed audits against data quality and compliance standards and provided tailored feedback to duty holders in March 2026.
Compliance assessment for 2026 gender equality action plans (GEAPs) and progress reports is underway. We expect to deliver feedback on these obligations in October 2026.
We will share insights on patterns of compliance across the public sector after GEAP and progress report compliance outcomes are finalised and communicated to duty holders.
Providing guidance and education
Regulatory priorities and actions
Ahead of the 2025-26 obligation reporting deadlines, the Commissioner shared her regulatory priorities and actions for these obligations in a public statement(opens in a new window).
The Commissioner applies a risk-based and outcomes-focused regulatory approach. This means she prioritises areas with:
- the biggest impact on gendered harms (avoidable social, economic, physical and psychological impacts that people experience because of gender inequalities), and
- the strongest opportunities for systemic improvement.
The Commissioner’s immediate regulatory priorities are:
- reducing gender pay gaps
- strengthening the prevention of – and the response to – workplace sexual harassment
- increasing men’s uptake of parental leave to support more equitable sharing of care.
Ensuring public sector organisations are appropriately using gender impact assessments to guide their public programs, policies and services also remains a priority.
The Commissioner’s statement also set out her enforcement approach for obligations submitted in the 2025-26 reporting cycle.
Capacity-building resources
To help duty holders prepare and submit these obligations, we delivered a range of resources and supports. This included:
- an induction webinar for new duty holders that attracted more than 380 registrations
- step-by-step instructional videos to help duty holders use obligation templates and the reporting platform, which attracted more than 1,300 views across 7 videos
- 26 online drop-in sessions focusing on reporting obligations, giving duty holders access to subject matter experts from across the Commission, which attracted a combined 735 attendances
- a new guidance note for using performance measures, Analysing your audit results(opens in a new window), which attracted more than 1,700 webpage views
- a new Performance Report on the Commission’s Reporting Platform to help duty holders analyse their audit data and use it for GEAP and progress reporting, used by almost 90% of duty holders
- compliance rubrics for GEAPs and progress reports, which attracted more than 260 webpage views.
Feedback from duty holders showed that the resources and support we provided were helpful. Overall, 82% of duty holders who completed our feedback survey were satisfied with the resources, guidance and support provided by the Commission. Our guidance documents were the most commonly used, and most helpful, resources. 92% of survey respondents found our audit guidance helpful, 86% found our GEAP guidance helpful, and 83% found our progress report guidance helpful.
Other resources rated most helpful by duty holders included the Data Quality Report on our reporting platform, obligation templates, the Analysing your audit results guide, and online drop-in sessions.
GIA factsheets for health and emergency services
To provide sector-specific guidance on gender impact assessments, we published gender impact assessment (GIA) factsheets for health organisations(opens in a new window) and those involved in emergency management(opens in a new window). We engaged GenderWorks to develop these in consultation with duty holders and peak bodies. The factsheets provide practical advice and build on our existing GIA toolkit.
Visiting duty holders
This year, Dr Vincent visited 37 duty holders, including 28 duty holder visits in regional and rural areas. She addressed governing bodies, leadership groups and staff cohorts to build a shared understanding of the Gender Equality Act and obligations.
These meetings are a key part of the Commission’s engagement and capacity-building efforts. They allow the Commissioner to speak directly with leaders and staff, tailoring key messages to each organisation, industry and region. Feedback from duty holders shows that these visits can be pivotal for securing leadership support and buy-in across staff groups.
By speaking directly with staff at duty holder organisations, the Commissioner also gains valuable insights into the different contexts and complexities public sector organisations navigate every day.
The number of Commissioner visits was lower in 2025-26 than previous years. This reflected necessary prioritisation, allowing Commission resources to be focused on the compliance-related priorities in this period.
Responding to enquiries and support requests
In 2025-26, Commission staff managed more than 2600 enquiries, an increase of more than 50% compared to the previous year. We maintained an average first response time of 2 days and an average satisfaction score of 4.6 out of 5.
Overall this year, 91% of cases received a first response within our target timeframe of 5 days. In late 2025 we implemented new tools to monitor response times. Following this, only 5 cases fell outside the 5-day first response target in the second half of the financial year.
Most enquiries related to our reporting platform and user accounts (43%). A further 39% related to audits, GEAPs and progress reports. This reflects duty holders’ focus on preparing and submitting obligations during this period.
Providing expert, timely and consistent advice to duty holders is a priority for the Commission. Email is our primary enquiry channel and, given current resources, this is a deliberate service model. Written enquiries can be directed to the appropriate subject matter expert and, where questions span data, policy and compliance, our responses draw on expertise from across the Commission. This helps ensure duty holders relying on our advice to meet their legal obligations receive responses that are accurate, consistent and on the record. While some duty holders would prefer access to a phone service, at our current size we have prioritised a model that enables us to maintain both the quality and timeliness of our regulatory advice, particularly during peak reporting periods.
Managing the duty holder lifecycle
This year saw a high volume of entity changes that affected organisations’ status and obligations under the Gender Equality Act. This was in part due to the Victorian Government’s response to the Independent Review of the Public Service. A range of duty holder organisations were affected by mergers, machinery of government changes, abolition or other entity changes.
Delivering timely information for duty holders navigating entity changes – particularly those becoming a duty holder for the first time – is important to support compliance. It ensures that organisations understand changes to their status and obligations under the Act.
Responding to disputes
The Gender Equality Act provides the Commissioner with certain powers to help resolve systemic workplace gender equality issues.
In 2025-26, the Commissioner received a number of enquiries relating to potential disputes. However, none of these matters progressed through the formal dispute resolution processes under the Act.
Engagement with duty holders, unions and other stakeholders indicates that the dispute resolution function is not yet sufficiently accessible or well understood to be used. Work to address this was deferred in 2025-26 while the Commission prioritised statutory compliance assessment. Until that work is completed, a mechanism the Act provides for resolving systemic issues remains largely unused.
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