Wednesday, 19 November 2025

 Georgie PURCELL (Northern Victoria) (09:53): I rise to acknowledge the fact that last week would have been Eurydice Dixon’s 30th birthday. Instead of being here to celebrate this milestone with her family and loved ones, she spent her final moments at just 22 years old making her way home just after midnight, not knowing those moments would be her very last. Eurydice was followed from Flinders Street through the grid of Melbourne’s CBD, past Melbourne University, until she was just 5 kilometres from this very building. In her final moments before her killer grabbed her by the hair, tore at her dress and forced her to the ground, she had messaged her boyfriend and said, ‘I’m nearly home, how about you?’ I know I am not the only one who cannot pass Princes Park without thinking about her. It has been eight years since he left her body on that soccer field, and in those eight years, 719 women and children have been killed in Australia, as reported in Sherele Moody’s Australian Femicide Watch. In 2024, 103 women were killed as a result of gender-based violence, up from 74 in 2023. So far this year that number sits at 62. Though nearly a decade has passed, Eurydice’s story refuses to fade, and it is critical that we members of Parliament have her story live on in each and every one of us, demanding us to carry her memory and fight harder for change.