Tania Maxwell MP has met with Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas to pitch public investment of $77.45 million in seven key health, education, justice, and infrastructure projects in Northern Victoria.
Major items the Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party put forward for state budget consideration include $35m for a Mildura drug court and alcohol and other drugs (AOD) rehabilitation unit, and $10.75m for the redevelopment and refit of Alpine Health’s Bright hospital to meet the needs of a growing and ageing community.
“A major study shows that re-offending can shrink by one third and offences become less serious in communities where drug courts operate. The impacts of drug use and related crime also drop in communities where rehabilitation services are available,” Ms Maxwell said.
“Drug courts operate in Dandenong, Melbourne, Ballarat and Shepparton, and there has been a trial of the County Court Drug and Alcohol Court.
“Mildura, as a remote but major community with concerning rates of crime and social vulnerability, would benefit from a dedicated drug court and supporting AOD rehabilitation unit to provide a therapeutic-orientated, judicially-supervised intervention for this community. “
The Bright Health Precinct project is forecast to cost $40m and include a redeveloped hospital, new residential high-care aged care centre, education institute, staff and student accommodation and s co-located, privately-run and funded medical clinic.
Ms Maxwell, with Ovens Valley MP Tim McCurdy and Independent federal MP for Indi Helen Haines, have been collaborating with Alpine Health to encourage state and federal government investment since planning was completed last year.
“The Victorian government last year provided Alpine Health with Regional
Health Infrastructure Fund money to develop a feasibility study and business
case for the precinct project,” Ms Maxwell said.
“Bright hospital and its staff continue to provide outstanding service,
but the hospital is no longer fit for purpose when Alpine communities have grown so strongly
in recent years, with Myrtleford, Bright, Mount Beauty, Harrietville,
Wandiligong, Porepunkah and local villages now home to almost 13,000 people,
plus a much bigger seasonal visitor population.
“It’s also the only Victorian community of such a size without
high-care aged care services, yet the number of older people has increased more
than 18 per cent since 2011.”
Ms Maxwell has also sought a $24.3m commitment from the state
government to fund Education First Youth Foyers in Wodonga and Wangaratta so young
people between 16 and 24 experiencing or at risk of homelessness can take up
education opportunities with a roof over their heads.
“A five-year study has delivered clear evidence of the foyer model’s
success from the three that are already helping young people elsewhere in
Victoria,” she said.
“It showed 85 per cent of participants had jobs or were continuing
education a year after they left the campus and 75pc completed year
12-equivalent or higher learning when they were living there.”
Other North East projects for which Ms Maxwell has sought funding
include:
$5m to ‘back the track’ – matching committed federal funding for a review of the Murray Basin Rail project and removing 20,000 heavy vehicles from Sunraysia and Mallee roads
$2.25m over three years for The Wodonga Project, bringing together the community, local schools and government agencies to help disadvantaged young people
$50,000 a year to extend Benalla Rural City
Council’s Rural Outreach service supporting people in rural communities to find
services and health and wellbeing advice.
$100,000 to help Strathbogie Shire Council and
the Euroa community develop a business case for reuniting both sides of the
town as a key outcome of major works on the federal government’s Inland Rail
project.
Federal government advertising is falling short on domestic violence messaging, with bad jokes and sledges at sports matches barely scratching the surface of the real problem, according to Northern Victorian MP Tania Maxwell.
“We are very used to seeing confronting road trauma violence in advertising from the Transport Accident Commission,” she said.
“But the ads about domestic violence – which is lethal for one woman a week in Australia – are all about calling out bad language when you see it or off-colour jokes about women and girls.
“If the problem of domestic violence was limited to degrading language – these ads would be spot on. But we know we have a much bigger problem than that.”
The ‘Unmute yourself’ ads, funded by the federal government, are a part of the Stop it at the Start campaign on domestic violence. One of the most recent ads features two men talking about girls and sport.
The older man asks a younger male “what’s wrong with playing like a girl?”
Ms Maxwell, who has campaigned against domestic and family violence for many years, said the advertising needed to reflect the realities of trauma – just as road safety messages did.
“The softly, softly approach to this issue is not appropriate,” she said.
“A lot of the messaging is silent on what men can do apart from reject degrading language.”
Coercive control should be shown in the ads to educate the audience about healthy expectations in relationships, Ms Maxwell said.
“I think an ad that told men ‘Your partner is allowed to disagree with you – or say no to you – without being punished for it’ would probably be eye-opening for a lot of people,” she said.
“There is an expectation that it’s ok to pressure a woman into going to parties she doesn’t want to attend, or use her money on things she objects to, and people need to know that mental and emotional abuse is domestic violence, too.”
Ms Maxwell said Australians should also reject soap operas as an instructional life guide.
“Children are like sponges and their perception of what is real in some TV shows can have lasting effects,” she said.
“Education is the key here in determining what is and isn’t real life.
“These are dramas – they are written and acted to entertain you – not teach you about how boyfriends and girlfriends should behave towards each other,” Ms Maxwell said.
“A lot of fictional television programs – not just the soap operas – are about grumpy, controlling men and sad, stressed women. We need to reject those role models and change the narrative.
“There is often a lot of conflict in the relationships on screen as part of the storytelling but it needs to be seen in its context as fictional entertainment, not as an expectation-setting tool.
“All those men who are respectful and treat everyone equally and there are, from my experience, thousands of them out there, should be thanked. It is a shame that the minority who display reprehensible behaviours don’t learn from the majority of men in our society.”
—
This story was first reported in The Bendigo Advertiser on January 6, 2022.
https://media.taniamaxwell.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/10105538/Screen-Shot-2022-01-10-at-10.53.27-1.png7341118Tania Maxwellhttps://media.taniamaxwell.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/30133823/PoV-Crest-White.pngTania Maxwell2022-01-10 10:58:562022-01-10 10:59:56Domestic violence ads shy on home truths
Hon. Martin Foley MP
Minister for Health, Ambulance Services and Equality
Dear Minister,
I write to seek your urgent assurance that the state government will make rapid antigen test (RAT) kits quickly and readily available to already-vulnerable regional and rural communities, businesses and services in Northern Victoria.
Echuca Moama and District Tourism speaks for many border and neighbouring communities when it confirms that local tourism and service operators, after two years of lockdown, restrictions and border closure, don’t have the resilience or opportunity to source and provide RAT kits to staff so they can keep their businesses open.
CEO Kathryn Mackenzie told me when I visited Echuca four weeks ago that many operators have
been grappling to fill staff and skill shortages and taken on higher borrowings to carry through the
COVID-19 pandemic. The situation is similar in other regional communities.
Yet now, at the peak of the first almost-normal summer visitor season in two years, businesses have
little choice but to close their doors or limit service because rising infection numbers and the RAT kit
shortage mean that staff who may have become close contacts cannot work. This is having a
significant impact on local communities desperate to achieve business recovery. And, from what you
have said publicly, the RAT kit shortage is to continue for some weeks.
I understand that limited supplies of RAT kits have been distributed to the four busiest Melbourne testing centres and, while this is understandable, it is critical that regional communities, with very little capacity in these very difficult times, are not left without these resources to help manage an escalating crisis.
At the same time, people in the communities I represent are struggling to access PCR testing, where necessary, and are confused by public health information about isolation requirements. News of health service staff furloughed, supply chain shortages and pressure on ambulance and police response times is only aggravating a keen sense of uncertainty.
Victoria’s coronavirus website provides guidance around PCR and rapid antigen tests, but there is no information about what people who cannot access testing should do to keep themselves and their families and colleagues safe.
Our communities are looking for clear direction and updates during the Omicron surge akin to
information regularly broadcast during emergencies such as bushfire. I therefore also ask the
government urgently to put in place a public health information campaign that keeps people
informed and safe.
https://media.taniamaxwell.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/07150650/Screen-Shot-2022-01-07-at-15.06.30.png416564Tania Maxwellhttps://media.taniamaxwell.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/30133823/PoV-Crest-White.pngTania Maxwell2022-01-07 15:10:172022-01-07 15:18:49Call for rapid antigen test availability in regional Victoria
A young lieutenant colonel at Wangaratta’s cenotaph on 11 November described Remembrance Day as Australia’s most significant war commemoration.
Scottie Morris, Army School of Ordnance commanding officer at Gaza Ridge Barracks near Wodonga, a former assistant attaché to the United Nations, told about 200 attendees of the Great War’s toll: Twenty million died. No corner of the European, North American or colonial world remained untouched by the years 1914 to 1918. And it endures.
As Lieutenant Colonel Morris observed, from the Armistice at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, 1918, we became the memory-keepers of a collective experience. One hundred and three years later school students Patrick Timmers and Abbey Collins from Cathedral College in Wangaratta read In Flanders Fields, and many local schools and college representatives laid wreaths. Rural City of Wangaratta traffic marshals stopped vehicles in the street for the ‘Last Post’, one minute’s silence at 11 o’clock, and ‘Reveille’ played with such skill by trumpeter Ben Thomas.
Thank-you to the Wangaratta RSL and Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral dean Ken Goodger for hosting this observance. By gathering we reinforced a tradition that endures unceasingly, sharing, as Lieutenant Colonel Morris said, our common respect for service in conflict, for the toll it took on those who fell, and for those who were left behind to pick up the pieces.
the prevalence of coercive control in family violence offending;
that perpetrators of family violence may offend against multiple family members and/or intimate partners;
that disclosure of relevant information about the criminal history of a perpetrator is a key indicator in family violence risk assessment and management;
calls on the Government to —
review legislative and procedural frameworks in relation to family violence to consider how evidence of coercive and controlling behaviour is available to illustrate the experience of family violence; and
consider the suite of initiatives and opportunities available to enhance understanding of coercive and controlling behaviour in our community and the justice system.
I rise today to speak on my motion #676 which calls on the government to examine the abhorrent behaviour known as coercive control and the potential for evidence of such behaviour to be used in court cases.
My motion today is to
represent victims who have suffered and endured the effects and impacts of
coercive control, and to seek much needed changes to how organisations and our
justice system respond to the impacts of coercive control and the traumatic implications
that are often irreversible.
I am not going to dance lightly around this subject today nor am I going to refrain from highlighting serious concerns about the insidious behaviours that ruin lives and leave lasting scars on victims. Scars that for some will never heal.
Some of this information may
be overwhelming, and it should be!
I am not here to sugar coat
the reality of the consequences and impacts of this appalling behaviour which
is nothing short of inexcusable, controlling and ultimately an expression of
inadequacy of those who inflict it on others.
The murder of Hannah Clarke
and her children in February 2020 broke the hearts of our nation. It has been a
watershed moment in sparking the national conversation around coercive control. We need to determine how this conversation is
going to happen in Victoria and that is why I am putting this motion to the
Parliament today.
One woman every week in
Australia dies at the hands of her current or former partner. According to the
Victorian Homicide Register there were 110 family violence homicides in this
state in the past 5 years.
There were more than 174,000 family violence offences reported in Victoria in the year ending 30 June 2021. This was an increase of 18 per cent on the previous year.
The Men’s Referral Service recorded a 90 per cent increase in calls in April 2020 when stage 3 restrictions were introduced.[i] Police were called to 92,251 incidents in 2020.[ii] These are big numbers.
Before I speak more
specifically about coercive control, I want to take a moment to pay my respects
to the victims, victim survivors, their families and loved ones. I also pay my
respects to the staunch advocates for those who don’t have a voice themselves –
who advocate for the deceased, for those who are silenced by grief, for those
who are living with violence and silenced by fear.
As MPs for Derryn Hinch’s
Justice Party, Mr Grimley and I have the privilege to advocate for those who
are impacted by crime, whether they are survivors or …..in their memories. We
speak with people every week whose lives are forever changed by the offences committed
against them or their loved one. Some are here today – your courage is truly
inspiring and is at the centre of our work.
I also note the efforts of
frontline police, family violence specialists and the broader social services
network who work at the coalface, who try to help people access safety, pick up
the pieces, achieve justice. It is complicated, heartbreaking work.
Coercive and controlling behaviours
are a form of violence involving repeat patterns of abusive behaviour. They can
cause enormous harm, leaving victims isolated, insecure and fearful.
Coercive controlling
behaviours pervasive by nature – it increases the likelihood of escalating violence
within a relationship, and it is likely to persist after separation.
Controlling behaviours might including any combination of measures, such as withholding money, tracking a phone, reading emails and texts. It could be regulating what someone wears, who they hang out with, or where they go. Following them. Isolating them. Making things so difficult that friends and family pull away.
Gaslighting, making threats, manipulation, intimidation. As a victim of coercive control becomes increasingly isolated, the patterns of abuse can escalate. It is no wonder they refer to coercive control as ‘invisible chains’.
Many
victims report that the psychological abuse is often worse than all but the
most extreme physical abuse, because of its persistent and enduring nature.
Going back to the case of
Hannah Clarke, one of her closest friends reported having spoken to her husband
on many occasions to effectively ‘pull him up’ on the controlling behaviours
that he exercised over his wife. This friend said that he only heard the term
coercive control after her death and that if he had known more about coercive
control he would have done more.[iii]
Here in Victoria, our courts
recently considered the horrifying abuse suffered by Michelle Skewes at the
hands of her ex-husband and I met with Ms Skewes in preparing this motion. Coercive controlling behaviours were
pervasive throughout her marriage and she describes trying to make herself a
small target and keeping a public mask of normality in order to hide her
private life of misery. For more than a decade, Ms Skewes was stripped of her
independence, her vibrancy and sense of self-worth, and the manipulation and
denigration extended to extreme physical and sexual violence.
Excerpts
noted by the judge from Ms Skewes victim impact statement noted the possibility
of vomiting triggers panic, she apologises for everything, and her self-esteem
is still broken by humiliation and shame. She is hyper vigilant, naturally
distrusting of others, anxious about her physical health, plagued by nightmares
and exhaustion. She has suffered the besmirching judgement of others as if her
abuse disturbed an idyllic public picture of her marriage.
Ms Skewes courage to share
her story in the face of all that she has endured is remarkable. Her offender
was sentenced to more than a decade in prison, and the Judge said: ‘this sentence must send a clear and
unequivocal message of deterrence that those who are like-minded to offend in
this way, particularly men in the context of coercive control and domestic
violence, must understand that their behaviour will be met by condemnation
and denunciation as utterly unacceptable conduct and with stern and just
punishment.’ Now, with much ahead to rebuild her life with her
children, Ms Skewes is in this parliament today hoping that she can help
prevent the abuse she endured from happening to others.
These offences are quite hard
to imagine, but the work of police, of social workers, of our courts, is
littered with cases of intimate partner and family violence.
The New South Wales Joint
Select Committee into coercive control has recommended a criminal offence for
the patterns of oppressive behaviour that are coercive control. This committee heard evidence that 111 out of
112 cases of intimate partner homicide – 99 per cent – had been preceded by
elements of coercive control[iv].
We are dreaming to think that
domestic and family violence offending stops when one relationship ends. You
only have to look at data from the Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme in South
Australia for verification that abusive partners can repeat their offending
from one relationship to the next. South Australia launched a Domestic Violence
Disclosure Scheme in 2018, where people with a concern about their safety could
apply to know information of a partner’s history of domestic offending. More
than 900 people have applied through the scheme for information since its
launch.
In an analysis of just 221 of
those applications, more than 100 men had a history of abuse of up to three
people, while 15 had harmed between four and 10 others.[v] That’s nearly half that had repeated their
offending across multiple partners. Keep in mind that this history will only
include what has been reported, so it’s a bit like an iceberg and there is
likely a lot more under the surface.
There are tragic cases in our
country of victims who were killed by a current or former partner, where there
were red flags and only when it is too late does the criminal history of the
offender emerge.
Rekiah O’Donnell is one such
case. Rekiah died at age 22 when she was murdered by her abusive partner. Only
after her death did the family become aware that he had previously offended and
had a former partner and two children who were hiding from him.
The Centre Against Violence in my home town of Wangaratta has done extensive work over decades with victims of violence, including family violence. In their experience, understanding the past behaviour and character of an offender is absolutely an indicator of future offending. But often they can’t share that information, or there are substantial limitations on what they can share.
Issues raised about our
justice system are not always about the laws that exist, but often about how
they are applied and how they can favour offenders to the detriment of their
victim.
One of the principles of our
criminal justice system is the concept of ‘de novo’ which effectively means
‘new’. Every incident is considered in its own right and this single-incident
approach doesn’t fit with the enduring nature of coercive control and some
other family violence offending. It
effectively means that offenders avoid accountability for the complex and
enduring behaviour patterns that occur in abusive relationships.
Coercive controlling
behaviours in isolation might be viewed as minor, and not criminal. When
considered in the total context of control, it’s a completely different picture
and this is what we need to capture.
Our existing criminal systems
are described as ‘too narrow to capture the patterns of coercion and control’.[vi]
Without consequence, or when behaviour is downplayed or dismissed, the behaviour
is reinforced in the mind of offenders – and blame is often shifted to the victims.
Kerry Burns is the former
Chief Executive Officer of the Centre Against Violence and a highly experienced
and respected practitioner.
In one of our first conversations after I was elected, Ms Burns spoke to me at length about the need to make the court system more victim-centred, including our courts taking into account the whole picture of offending when it comes to family violence. As a service, they might have considerable information relating to family violence for their client, including coercive controlling behaviours, that is never considered by our courts.
If an organisation like the
Centre Against Violence or a GP or health service has information about that
history, it should be required to be put to the courts when offending is
against an intimate partner or family member, to provide a consideration of the
broader context in which the offending occurred.
With me in Parliament today
is Lee Little. Lee’s daughter, Alicia was killed by her partner as she
attempted to leave the relationship. Alicia’s body was crushed against a water
tank by the car her partner was driving and he left the scene without assisting
her. She died.
Alicia’s offender was charged
with murder and this was later plea bargained down to a charge of dangerous
driving causing death. The OPP indicated to the family that the plea bargain
guaranteed them a guilty verdict, it saved them the ‘trauma’ of a trial. For
the family, not only did they lose Alicia – they felt they lost their justice.
Alicia had interactions with
the Centre Against Violence before her death and had reported to her doctor.
The court noted their relationship was volatile and their four year
relationship had been marked by episodes of family violence. Yet there was no
opportunity for the records of the Centre Against Violence, or the evidence of
their case workers, to be presented to the court and so there was little
consideration of family violence in the context of this offence. Not to mention that he was subject to an IVO
by a former partner.
The plea bargaining process,
by reducing the charge took family violence outside of the scope of the
incident. And so the court never obtained the full picture.
Plea bargaining is seen as a
necessary and efficient part of our justice system, most often the horse-trading
of a guilty plea in exchange for a reduced charge and lower sentence. Courts
often justify this by saying that victims aren’t traumatised through the court
process – which might be true, but victims and their families often say they want
their day in court, they want their story known. This is certainly the case for Lee Little and
her family.
The Coroner has indicated to
the family that they will conduct a review of Alicia Little’s death, and a
Systemic Review of Family Violence Deaths forms part of coronial proceedings.
But Alicia died in 2017 and it could still be years before the inquest takes
place.
Another victim survivor of
family violence can attest to the adverse impact of plea bargaining on her case
and that person is watching today from the Queen’s Hall. They say that coercive
control often first presents itself as an expression of love, of interest and protection. For this survivor, charm turned to coercive
control and later sexual and physical violence. The offender was charged with
70 criminal offences, that were reduced once he pleaded guilty. In the end, he
was sentenced to just three months’ jail, which was further reduced on appeal to
a two-year community correction order.
The long-term impacts are not
just for the intimate partner, but extend to the children. Let’s call child one
Liam. Liam was 8 when his mother met his stepfather. He was fabulous at first
and would play footy with him. Later he
would be mean to Liam, call him names, constantly criticise him, be rough with
him. Liam did his best to just stay out of his way. This went on for years.
He would witness his mother
being physically and verbally abused. His little sister was assaulted. Ultimately
his step-father assaulted his mother so badly, with Liam watching, he thought
she died. Liam felt guilty because he couldn’t protect his mum. He was part of
their safety plan and knew if things got bad, his job was to take his little
sister and get out of the house. He constantly felt the fear in the house.
Liam was not recognised as a
victim in his own right despite being subject to the coercive controlling
offending of his step-father, like his sister and his mother.
As the Centre Against Violence tells me, unless the whole picture of their offending is presented, the context is not completely understood or considered. The courts will be presented with references from the defence showing the offender to be a great guy, someone who is usually placid, that the offending seems out of character. But there is often not the same scrutiny to the other side, to the pattern of offending, because of the incident based nature of our judicial system.
This is not just about sentencing, or sentence lengths. It’s also about accountability and rehabilitation. If our system doesn’t see the full picture how does our system really work to create change? How is rehabilitation achieved? How does an offender have insight or take true accountability? How do conditions on a CCO properly reflect the big picture if it’s not known? How do perpetrator programs address offending if the big picture is not understood?
So what now? Jurisdictions across Australia are actively
considering how coercive control is addressed within their existing frameworks.[vii]
The UK criminalised coercive control in 2015, making an offence of ‘coercive and controlling behaviour’.[viii] Offences doubled between 2017 and 2018, with just over 9000 offences of coercive control recorded by the police in England and Wales, out of a total of around two million domestic incidents.[ix]
Tasmania has offences for
economic abuse and emotional abuse or intimidation, as well as a ‘course of
conduct’ offence made up of a number of coercive behaviours.
In Western Australia, the
criminal offence of ‘persistent family violence’ recognises patterns of abuse
by criminalising three or more acts of family violence against one
victim-survivor within a ten-year period.
In New South Wales, a Joint
Select Committee on Coercive Control was established in 2020 and their report
recommended the criminalisation of coercive control.
The Northern Territory and
Queensland are both reviewing their legislation to determine criminalisation of
the offence.
I hope that our state
governments work together to develop nationally consistent definitions and set
up a national database of domestic violence orders. I hope that the path
Victoria takes will give this due consideration so that information sharing is
streamlined and consistency is achieved. We don’t want this we need this!
There are suggestions that if
coercion and course of conduct offences are criminalised by proxy through the
civil protection regime – you take out an intervention order for the behaviour,
and if a person breaches they commit a criminal offence.
We know from the death of
Celeste Manno that there are significant failings in the reliance on
intervention orders and how breaches are sanctioned.
Celeste’s tragic death
brought her family to Parliament with me, and led to the government initiating
a review of stalking responses through the VLRC. We look forward to the
recommendations of that review.
The Scottish approach to coercive control has been a little different, and is currently considered the gold standard. A course of conduct offence includes a pattern of behaviour that is abusive to the victim, and where a reasonable person would consider the course of behaviour is likely to cause the victim physical or psychological harm. Rather than proof resting on the victim that the offence caused harm to them, the proof is on a reasonable understanding for the offender that their behaviour would frighten or otherwise harm the targeted partner.
In 2020, then Attorney General Jill Hennessy said she had asked the Department of Justice to consider options to strengthen responses to coercive behaviour.[x] This consideration needs to happen now and I am pleased that through the course of conversations with the government about my motion today,that a review of the current frameworks will take place.
I know that the Victorian
government is actively looking at a course of conduct offence along the lines
of the Scottish model and I have spoken in some detail with the Minister for
the Prevention of Family Violence in this regard. I appreciate her willingness to work with me
and to ensure that the full experiences of victims of crime are given due
consideration in determining the way forward for Victoria.
Whether coercive control or a
course of conduct offence is established in Victoria, we still need to fix the
ongoing issue where these behaviours are not presented where an offender faces
court for violent offences against their intimate partner or family member. This
gap needs to close.
As I mentioned earlier, South
Australia has had a Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme in place since 2018. It
received a strong update during its first twelve months and funding was
extended to 2020 and again this year. In
the first two years of the scheme they received 455 applications and 317 were
eligible for further consideration – that’s 70%! 18 applicants were at imminent
risk. More than half the applicants had not previously received support from a
domestic violence service.
South Australia is now
looking at a scheme that would require police to contact a person they believed
was at risk as a result of domestic violence, instead of waiting to be asked.
New South Wales initiated a
very limited pilot, which at first seemed to be quite successful however it was
abandoned after mixed findings. This pilot was criticised for its design, which
was limited to only four local government areas and it is perhaps the execution
and not the scheme that failed here. Nonetheless, In the first two years the
scheme received 149 applications and 42% of those resulted in a criminal
history disclosure being made – that’s more than 62 people that had a conversation
about their safety and were connected with support.
Lee Little has been a staunch
advocate for a national disclosure scheme to be implemented in Australia. The opposition took the commitment of a pilot
to the last election. The Report of the Victorian Royal Commission into Family
Violence noted that Victoria Police had suggested consideration be given to
including a disclosure scheme in Victoria.
In Victoria, there is
progress in how information on prior offending is used to try and improve safety
for people who are at risk of violence.
I completely support the use
of information in this targeted and strategic way, though hope the meaning
doesn’t fall through the gaps. It is my understanding that if a person was to
directly ask about offending, then the service provider can’t directly
answer. Police can reach into other
systems, but they still have to actively go looking and I hope that between the
states we can find a way to make this information more readily available. There are limitations to what information can
be disclosed, even between agencies.
For example, if one agency
has an understanding about an offender and are liaising with Child Protection
they can’t openly discuss that information. What they can do is suggest they
run a history themselves to get broader context.
In educating our community
about the violence that is coercive control, there has to be an end-to-end response
that includes our justice system. A clear message of what behaviours are not
acceptable or tolerated for our citizens, with clear and effective early
interventions, but also with clear consequences so that those who perpetrate
offences on others are held to account.
This is a greater community
conversation, about equipping the community to build capacity for change. It
involves what happens at home, what happens at school, in our sporting clubs
and community groups. Changing the norms, calling it out. Knowing how to have a
conversation with a friend or family member about behaviour that makes you
worried for them.
The best result is for coercive control, course of conduct offending, family violence offending, all violent offending to stop. The best way to protect victims is to stop offending from occurring in the first place. That’s a big project. It’s a goal that for every week that someone dies at the hands of their partner – or a stranger – we should remain firmly fixed. For the memory of every victim, and for the loved ones left behind.
Ms TERPSTRA (Eastern Metropolitan) (14:24): I rise to speak on the motion as proposed in regard to a range of things regarding family violence but also particularly the prevalence of coercive control in family violence offending. It calls on the government to review our legislative and procedural frameworks in relation to family violence to consider how evidence of coercive and controlling behaviour is available to illustrate the experience of family violence and consider a suite of initiatives and opportunities available to enhance the understanding of coercive and controlling behaviour in our community and the justice system.
As many would know in this place, the government
accepted all of the recommendations that arose out of the Royal Commission into
Family Violence, and it is something that our government were world-first
leaders in in announcing the Royal Commission into Family Violence. We have
acquitted 204 of the royal commission’s 227 recommendations, and all of
the 23 remaining recommendations are well underway.
Before I go any further I would also like to
acknowledge any victim-survivors who may be watching the live broadcast at
home. Obviously some of you may be here in this chamber unknown to me, so if
you are impacted I wish to acknowledge you as well—and also, as I said,
acknowledge those people who may be watching on the live broadcast and remember
those who have been killed as a result of family violence as well. We also keep
at the forefront of our minds all those who are experiencing family violence
today and for whom we undertake this very important work.
As I said, we have acquitted 204 of the royal commission’s
227 recommendations, and the remainder are well underway. This government
has invested $3.5 billion, more than every other state combined and more
than the commonwealth, into addressing this problem. There is more to do. There
will always be more to do in this space. It is a very intractable problem, and
family violence and the consequences of it have roots in many different
geneses. We have talked about gender inequity as one basis for gendered
violence but also family violence. There are many, many things that contribute
to it. So there are a range of fronts that governments and agencies need to
work on, and we are consistently and persistently working our way to wind back
these behaviours and to protect family violence survivors.
I just want to focus a little bit on the issue of
coercive control. We need to speak carefully about coercive control,
particularly in the context of what protections we are offering to family
violence survivors, because I think perhaps what is embedded in Ms Maxwell’s
motion—again I thank her for bringing this to the house, and it is by no means
a criticism at all—but what I think is perhaps not well understood is that
there are a range of mechanisms within our family violence responses that do
allow for, whether it is the authorities or not, protections to be afforded to
people who are experiencing coercive control as part of that spectrum of family
violence behaviours. So it is clear; it is identified. I understand the point
that different jurisdictions might have other particular and specific, nuanced
approaches, but rest assured that here in Victoria our legislative frameworks
do address this point.
Coercive and controlling behaviour can already
constitute an offence in Victoria, and it is explicitly defined as a form of
family violence in section 5 of the Family Violence Protection
Act 2008. It also sits alongside economic, psychological, emotional,
physical and sexual abuse. As we know, all these forms of abuse or control can
interact and all form parts of coercive control or be singular offences in and
of themselves. Section 5 does provide that framework for those things to
be identified and recognised, and as I said, we need to be really, really clear
that coercive and controlling behaviour is family violence. It is not
either/or. It is a form of family violence. It is recognised as family violence
in the current policy settings in Victoria. As I said, it is recognised by the
law, can already constitute a criminal offence and is recognised in our risk
assessment frameworks.
It is also really important that we communicate
clearly to victim-survivors in Victoria that these behaviours are recognised,
because they can be dealt with by the law and there is help and support
available. If we somehow want to say—perhaps inadvertently even—that there
might be a gap, we risk then people not coming forward and getting the help
that they need or the protection that they need and deserve. So as I said, we
need to be careful in the way in which we talk about this issue. As I said earlier,
when it comes to the public conversation around coercive control it is really
important that we treat the issue with a nuance and acknowledge these inherent
complexities, some of the matters I spoke to just a moment ago. As the
conversation around Australia continues to grow and it gathers traction, the
narrative has at times been oversimplified and often frames coercive control,
as I said earlier, as a standalone tactic. But it is complex; it is
multifaceted. It is important to emphasise, as I said earlier, coercive control
can coexist with almost all forms of family violence. It is that complex
interaction, but it can coexist and it can stand alone.
We acknowledge that as family violence reform
progresses here in Victoria we must also ensure that the totality of
victim-survivors’ experiences is captured by the system and that it responds to
family violence and continues to do so. Several victim-survivors have
identified that for too many the response to their family violence was too
incident based, for example, and failed to capture the full picture of the
abuse they endured. One victim-survivor in her evidence to the royal commission
said:
It is the prevalence and the all-encompassing
awareness that you are living with something that is dangerous—life
threatening. That fact slowly and methodically eats away at your self-awareness
and ability to make decisions. All your decisions are about self-preservation
and how safe you are from day to day and hour to hour.
I could not imagine living with that fear and
constant level of threat arousal in my day-to-day life. It would be
all-encompassing, it would be exhausting and you would constantly be walking on
eggshells. This is why we have got to continue in the work that we are doing to
increase support and assistance for victim-survivors of family violence. As I
said, this can have a significant and detrimental impact on a victim-survivor’s
perception of their own experience of family violence relative to others. I
know that I have had constituents in my own region talk to me about their
family violence experiences, and although having survived perhaps and come out
of an abusive relationship, oftentimes there is ongoing PTSD that results from
living with those violent and coercive controlling behaviours which people need
assistance to manage. So once you have left a coercive controlled relationship
or a relationship that is full of family violence, whilst there is some hope,
oftentimes the path is not straightforward and easy. There are still ongoing
issues to deal with.
The Royal Commission into Family Violence
considered but did not recommend implementation of a standalone coercive
control offence, and as I said earlier, our legislation already deals with
that, because there is a range of provisions that recognise that controlling
behaviour can be standalone but it can also interact with other forms. But we
will always consider further ways to end family violence. We will continue to
consider advice from the experts, the community and victim-survivors of family
violence about the necessary reform to keep women and children safe. So it will
be an evolving situation, and we recognise that we have to get existing systems
working to recognise and respond to coercive control. Any further legislative
changes would only be considered after extensive consultation with
victim-survivors, professionals and experts in the area. Domestic Violence
Victoria CEO Tania Farha stated:
A new law is not where we should be starting in
Victoria, where there is already recognition of coercive control in our
legislation. The focus needs to be on improving how existing laws are applied.
So again when it comes to coercive control,
Domestic Violence Victoria noted:
Safe and just outcomes for victim survivors
requires a whole of systems and community response—where everyone has a shared
understanding of what coercive control is and looks like, and how to assess and
manage associated risks.
So again I just want to recognise and pay respect
to those victim-survivors of family violence— (Time expired)
Ms CROZIER (Southern Metropolitan) (14:34): I am pleased to be able to rise and speak to Ms Maxwell’s motion this afternoon. She spoke with such passion and commitment, and she has been speaking about this for a very long time. I know—I was in the streets marching with Ms Maxwell before she entered this place, in defence and in support of those affected by family violence. So she has always been committed to this cause, and I think she showed that through her commitment in her contribution this afternoon to this very important matter.
She mentioned some of the people that have been
affected by this—the women who have been affected, who are in Queen’s Hall.
Lee, Michelle and Jana are in watching this debate this afternoon.
I want to congratulate Ms Maxwell for bringing
this motion to the house. Can I say that the Liberals and Nationals will be
supporting the motion because it is asking for a review into this important
area around coercive control. I know that parliaments around the country are
looking into this area. In New South Wales, as Ms Maxwell said, the
parliamentary inquiry that looked into it made a suite of recommendations. The
government is reviewing those recommendations and will bring down their report
and speak to that from those findings. There were dozens of findings actually
in that very thorough inquiry that was conducted in New South Wales. Likewise
in Queensland they are also looking at this issue.
But it brought me back. I know the government is
saying that they had the family violence royal commission, which we were all
very supportive of, and despite the commentary—the unfortunate, unnecessary
commentary—in the lead-up to the 2018 election there was bipartisan support for
that important royal commission. The government has not undertaken, has not
been able to undertake or has failed to implement all 227 of the
recommendations. There are still a couple of dozen that are outstanding, and
they are important. I note that Domestic Violence Victoria, in this year’s
budget, was calling for an urgent response to a flawed funding system. They are
saying things that the government has not promised. I think that is the danger
with this.
The government keeps talking about the big picture.
They keep making these very big promises and the expectation is there but they
just cannot meet it, and as a result people are let down and the system is
failing. And it is failing, because if you look at the latest crime statistics,
the number of family violence offences leading up to 30 June of this year
increased from 88 205 to 93 440, a 5.9 per cent increase. That
is on the Crime Statistics Agency website. We know that lockdowns really
exacerbated some terrible situations behind closed doors, and that family
violence rates increased is no surprise as a result of the stresses and the
pressures of extended lockdown. Extraordinary numbers of people spoke to me
about their concerns. If you look now at the sad statistics of marriage
break-ups, I think that says a lot about what has happened over the last 20 months
and the failure of the government to understand not only the health impacts but
the social impacts and the mental health impacts of their decisions to lock
Victoria down, and they want to do it again.
This motion about coercive control reform reminded
me of what I was doing as the shadow minister at the time, and that was the
Liberal-Nationals took a policy to the last state election regarding the ‘Right
to Ask, Right to Know’, based on Clare’s Law. It reminded me of a remarkable
woman that I met, Samantha Handley. Her story is extraordinary. It talks about
those elements that Ms Maxwell spoke of: the psychological impacts, the
power of coercion, feeling that she could not leave her partner who was
abusive. She did not know he was abusive at the time, but she felt that he had
such a powerful control over her, and that is part of what this motion is
about—that coercive control. Samantha Handley was extraordinary in herself
because she was a woman that felt after she left her first marriage with her
children that, as she says, she was in a loving relationship before his control
over her slowly built up and she realised he had become abusive. That is what
Ms Maxwell is speaking about and that is what this coercive control really
shows. Samantha said in an article on 14 October 2016 that:
At first I refused to take any notice. I really
liked this guy and he had a hold on me.
This built up and her family started to get worried
about it and she started to realise that something was not quite right, so she
started to do a Google search and found that this man had been charged with
some very violent offences in New South Wales.
That was the reason why I presented that policy as
part of a suite of measures that could assist women in these violent situations
and improve outcomes. Sadly, it was dismissed out of hand, and the then
minister, Minister Hutchins, virtually ridiculed what we were presenting. I was
really disappointed with the government’s response. It was again this
assumption, this arrogance, that they know best, that this is their space.
Well, no-one owns any space when it comes to violence or abuse against women or
anyone. It is what we need to do to improve the status and situation, and
unfortunately the situation is getting worse.
I want to just place on record again the enormous
gratitude that I have for Samantha Handley for coming out and telling her story
and being part of that voice. Hers is a very powerful story about what
Ms Maxwell is talking about today in her motion: the coercive abuse, the coercive
powers and how that can really be a very insidious sort of abuse that is
silent. It is not there, but it is very powerful. As Samantha said, she felt so
isolated because of these coercive powers.
In closing I want to again commend Ms Maxwell
for her advocacy in this regard and for outlining the argument that she has.
But I do want to say that I think it is disappointing. The crime stats do not
lie. They are the numbers, and the numbers are getting worse. Despite all that
has been said, the numbers are getting worse, and that is something that I
think needs to be noted, and I think that everybody acknowledges and
understands that more needs to be done. There are still recommendations from
the Royal Commission into Family Violence which were handed down in 2015, so
six years ago, that are outstanding. This government might talk the big talk,
but it is actually results and outcomes that matter. When the figures and the
stats are there from the crime stats agency to say that it is not getting
better, it is getting worse, then maybe we need to look at exactly what is
going on.
Again I say, on behalf of the Liberals and
Nationals, we support Ms Maxwell’s motion to recognise the prevalence of
coercive control in family violence offending, that perpetrators of family
violence may offend against multiple family members and intimate partners and
that disclosure of relevant information about the criminal history of a
perpetrator is a key indicator in family violence risk assessment and
management—those red flags that she spoke of. The motion calls on the
government to review legislative and procedural frameworks in relation to
family violence to consider how evidence of coercive and controlling behaviour
is available to illustrate the experience of family violence, and finally, to
consider the suite of initiatives and opportunities available to enhance the
understanding of coercive and controlling behaviour in our community and the
justice system.
I hope the government does not disregard
Ms Maxwell’s suggestions like they disregarded the policy I took to the
2018 election.
Mr BARTON (Eastern Metropolitan) (14:44): I rise to speak on Ms Maxwell’s motion on coercive control and family violence. I will be supporting this motion today. Coercive control is a pattern of domination that includes tactics to isolate, degrade, exploit and control a person. It is a non-physical form of violence. This motion seeks not to criminalise coercive control but to consider how evidence of coercive and controlling behaviour illustrates the experience of family violence. This is based upon coercive control being a predictor of severe physical violence and homicide. Coercive control is not a one-off; it is an ongoing, relentless pattern of controlling and manipulative behaviours that renders victims powerless.
I recognise that this concept is difficult to find
and identify as it is based on patterns and context, although I think it is
addressed appropriately in this motion. Coercive control is absolutely a
foundational element of family violence, and it should be recognised as such.
The Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence found that family violence
differs from other forms of violence as it is generally underpinned by a
pattern of coercion, control and domination by one person over another. This
makes clear the role of coercive control in family violence. This motion seeks
to understand the relationship between coercive control and family violence. If
we ignore the role of controlling behaviour and focus only on physical
violence, we do not do justice to the victim of abuse. This can have lethal
consequences.
The Royal Commission into Family Violence cited the
findings of a UK study that found that the extent of the father’s control over
the family rather than the frequency of family violence was an indicator that
the father was at risk of killing his own children. This tells us that there is
much reason to look at new legislative and procedural frameworks that could
analyse how coercive control feeds into family violence as well as how coercive
control can illustrate to some the extent of the presence of family violence.
It appears that in other jurisdictions more is
being done to address coercive control. New South Wales has a joint committee
on coercive control, the Northern Territory is considering options for
criminalising coercive control, a private members bill to criminalise coercive
control is before the Parliament of South Australia, Queensland has launched an
independent task force and the ACT has announced in-principle support for criminalising
coercive control.
I thank Ms Maxwell for bringing this important
discussion to the Victorian Parliament for us today. These discussions are the
first steps to be made in addressing this issue and certainly assisting in
education on this issue. I would like to see every professional who comes into
contact with victims of family violence, such as health professionals, social
workers, lawyers, judges, police and victim-survivor services, to understand
the nature of coercive control. They should understand that it controls victims
and traps them in a relationship that can be very difficult to get out of. Of
course training alone will not shift outcomes. There needs to be organisational
change, accountability and transparency. We must do whatever we can to reduce
violence against women in this country. That is why I will be supporting this
motion today, and I commend this motion to the house.
Mr GEPP (Northern Victoria) (14:48): I too rise to speak on Ms Maxwell’s motion before the house today on family violence. Can I begin by just very quickly saying thank you for all the well wishes that I have received from across the chamber during my absence.
I want to thank Ms Maxwell for her continued
strong advocacy in this very, very important area of public policy. I know from
speaking to some of the men in the Parliament around the place about this
issue—each and every time we have a conversation—that it is so important that
we continue to have this conversation, that we never stop having this
conversation. It is very confronting. It is very confronting for the men in
this chamber and in this Parliament that I have had conversations with to think
that there are those among us, there are men in our society, who exhibit and
practice these sorts of behaviours in their weak and cowardly attempts to
control women and children in our society. It is very important that we
continue to have this conversation, that we never stop.
One of the most confronting statistics I think in
this debate is to think that since we have been going, and we are now some
47 minutes into this discussion, there have been eight incidents,
statistically, of family violence in Victoria—just in the time that we have
been having this conversation.
That is about 206 incidents every day here in this
state, and we must never stop, we must never rest, until that number hits zero.
Ms Maxwell: That’s the reported ones.
Mr GEPP: That is exactly right, that is just the reported number. Ms Maxwell is quite correct. We do not know about all of those that are unreported. But we must never stop trying and doing everything that we possibly can to bring that number to zero.
I want to acknowledge the courage, the strength and
the bravery of the victim-survivors who are with us today in Queen’s Hall but
also all of those victim-survivors of family violence and those that are no
longer with us. It is just abhorrent to anyone, any decent human being, to
think that any person in our society would seek to exercise control over
another to the extent of their own gain and benefit and that they would choose
to do so with violence in particular.
I do want to congratulate the Victorian
government’s Minister for Prevention of Family Violence and Minister for Women,
the honourable Gabrielle Williams. She is steadfast in her determination to do
as much as she can in this space. I know from talking to the minister that she
does not rest on what we have done to date. She is always striving for better
outcomes for women, for children, for victim-survivors of family violence and
for their families. That is evidenced I think by the fantastic work that she
has led in response to the royal commission and the work that she will continue
to lead.
The government is also very much focused on
improving our system that identifies and responds to things such as coercive
control, the matter that Ms Maxwell has brought before us. We do remain
open to evidence-based solutions to ensure victim-survivors’ whole experience
of violence is seen and acknowledged by the system—not just a little bit, not
just some of it, but all of it—and that includes of course their experience
through the justice system. That is a big component. As we know from
victim-survivors themselves, it is a big component of their experience.
I could be wrong, and I stand to be corrected, but
my understanding is that in terms of the plea-bargaining that Ms Maxwell
referred to earlier there is legislation that has been brought to the other
place. Again, my understanding could be wrong, but I think if matters are not
to go to trial it requires the agreement of all the parties involved so that
there is an agreed plea—that is, if the victim-survivor does not agree then
that plea agreement, if you like, would not be advanced, and it would go to
trial. That is my understanding of it. I just think it is important to put that
on the record. We know that the experiences, as I said, of the justice system
are such a crucial part of a victim-survivor’s journey—having that day in
court, but feeling that real sense of justice.
We all remember not too long ago when the
conversation was about, ‘Oh, what did she do? Why didn’t she leave? Why didn’t
she’—well, it cannot be about the victim-survivor. It can never be about the
victim-survivor. It has got to be about the perpetrator, and it has got to be
about the behaviours that that person not only exhibits but practises in the
home. I think all of us would know of somebody, either in our immediate circles
or maybe in our extended circles that has experienced some sort of domestic
violence, and it is absolutely abhorrent.
And to think that it is such a leading contributor
to injury and death of women in our community is just
extraordinary—particularly those in the age group of 15 to 44. It is just quite
staggering.
So we have spent a lot of money and we have done a
lot of things, but it is not enough, because in this country one in four women
will experience some form of physical or sexual violence by a current or a
former partner. We also know, in terms of coercive control, that it is a
feature of most of those occurrences of domestic violence. Mr Barton,
Ms Maxwell, Ms Crozier and Ms Terpstra talked about the elements
of coercive control, and I will not go through all of those again, but it is a
clear feature—it is a very clear feature—of the experiences of
victim-survivors. Whether it is money, whether it is psychological, whether it
is physical abuse—whatever controlling mechanism that these cowards are
using—it is all part of them putting themselves in a dominant position to be
able to control, particularly, women and children.
We must do everything that we can. We must never
rest until we can find better ways to assist women experiencing and children
experiencing those environments. We have got to change the behaviours and it
has got to come with respect, and every time we see violence that is being
used—I do not care, you know, whether it is a set of gallows out the front or
any other type of violence—we have got to call it out for what it is. We have
got to say ‘That’s unacceptable’. It is unacceptable because each and every
time we see those sorts of things in our society it enables those that have
those tendencies to run away and indeed play out those very features in their
own lives.
It behoves all of us I think to raise the standard,
to show a bit more respect, to understand that we are in a pluralist society
and to understand that we are all equal. The bigotry, the hatred and the
domination only come from when we are actually supposed to be better, when we
are growing up, when we are mature adults, and it only seems to get worse when
we get to that point. So thank you, Ms Maxwell, for your strong advocacy
in this area. May it always continue, as I know it will. I look forward to
continuing this very, very important conversation with you and the Parliament.
Dr BACH (Eastern Metropolitan) (14:58): I am also very pleased to join this important debate brought on by Ms Maxwell. As Mr Gepp has said—and numerous other members—Ms Maxwell is a tireless advocate for victims of crime across the board. I know that she has particularly strong views, and they are well founded, when it comes to family violence and the prevention of violence against women and children. I have the pleasure and privilege of sitting on the Legal and Social Issues Committee with Ms Maxwell, and despite the fact that in another life I was a different government’s adviser on the prevention of violence against women and children, this particular element, a really important element and really pervasive element of family violence—which exactly as Mr Gepp said is sadly still such a widespread societal problem—is not one, I do not mind saying, that I had great knowledge about. It has been incredibly useful for me and instructive for me to sit on that committee, to engage with Ms Maxwell and the chair, Ms Patten, and a range of other members of that committee but also to hear from experts, in particular experts who I know Ms Maxwell has a long history with.
I find myself in so many of these matters agreeing
wholeheartedly with Mr Gepp. I enjoy following Mr Gepp, because he
makes on these matters incredibly strong and heartfelt contributions that we
would all do well to heed and to listen to. I am convinced, as he is, that
these sorts of behaviours, as abhorrent as they are, are incredibly widespread.
Even though in matters of law, of jurisprudence, I
am a traditionalist, I do think we have to acknowledge that our current systems
and structures over many years have failed in particular women who have been
the victims of family violence and forms of sexual assault. Members of the
government—Ms Terpstra—entirely appropriately, notably, have spoken about
the government’s undoubted commitment to continue to do better when it comes to
family violence. I will not recapitulate some of the points that Ms Crozier
made in articulating, rightly so, our shared commitment to continue to do
better.
We have come so far. We see unacceptably high rates
of family violence in our community. The analysis of that data is difficult
because for a time—I daresay things have changed now—many within the family
violence sector thought that at least in some respects, and I will seek to
choose my words very carefully here, as we saw that data increase,
demonstrating the pervasive nature of family violence in our community, that
demonstrated at least one thing that was not entirely negative, and that was
that some systems were changing to enable more victim-survivors to come forward
and to seek help. I daresay we have now reached a point in the community where
we no longer hear that sort of messaging from family violence groups.
Ultimately of course we want to drive down both the published data and, far
more importantly, the real incidence of family violence in the community. I am
most certainly not against the notion of looking, as Ms Maxwell said, at
the full suite of initiatives and opportunities available to enhance the
understanding of coercive and controlling behaviour in our community and the
justice system to see how we can do better, because as we have heard on the Legal
and Social Issues Committee—this is something I have discussed with
Ms Patten as well—it is devilishly difficult for the police and other
support services so oftentimes to get to the bottom of what has occurred in
interpersonal relationships.
That is one of the reasons why I was very pleased
to read in the newspapers over the weekend that the Attorney-General is also
looking at innovative reforms in the broader space of sexual assault when
thinking about consent and how again we can hopefully change some legal
processes to deliver justice for more Victorian women, and more than that of
course to seek to put in place programs and, more importantly—I think
Mr Gepp was right—to embark upon what will be undoubtedly a longstanding
mission of seeking to change attitudes in the community. There has been a
longstanding bipartisan agreement in Victoria that central to family violence,
to sexual assault, are attitudinal problems that so many men have. There has
been a longstanding bipartisan position in this place that violence against
women and sexual assault is gendered violence. It is hard, as Mr Gepp
said, to kind of rationalise just how prevalent that violence is in our
community. I agree therefore that we all have a deep commitment not to laugh
along at that joke that probably 15 or 20 years ago was pretty normal and
that in sports clubs or when you were out with your mates you laughed along to
and to seek to stand up whenever you hear attitudes expressed that are harmful,
because I think we are all in agreement that we have such a long way to go.
Our current legal structures do not function well
enough to support victim-survivors and also to seek to drive down the incidence
of family violence. Furthermore they do not function well enough to support
victim-survivors of sexual assault. Just looking at the numbers of women,
overwhelmingly, who come forward to report sexual assault and then ultimately
prosecution rates, they are unacceptable to me and they are unacceptable to the
coalition. I do not want to speak for the Attorney-General, but I know that
they are unacceptable to her as well, so I welcomed the announcement she made
over the weekend and look forward to working alongside her as we seek to do
better, certainly in the broad area of the prevention of violence against women
and children and here in this specific area that Ms Maxwell has been
talking about for so long.
It is not an area that gets as much attention I
think as some other forms of violence against women, and I think that is
understandable. I hear from friends and sources in the legal community some of
their arguments about why it has been historically so difficult to get at the
nub of this issue and to seek to combat it, but that does not mean that we
should not seek to do better. In fact it means the opposite—that we should take
on that challenge, look at all options, be open to change and be open to legal
innovation, where that is appropriate, to do far better than we are doing right
now for victim-survivors.
Just as I finish, in talking about legal matters
and matters of jurisprudence it would be simply remiss of me not to remark upon
the passing of Sir James Gobbo recently, a great Victorian, obviously a justice
of the Supreme Court and ultimately a Governor. We will have the opportunity to
engage in a condolence debate for Sir James next week. I commend
Ms Maxwell for bringing this motion to the house and reiterate that I
think it deserves our support.
Ms PATTEN (Northern Metropolitan) (15:06): I am pleased to rise to make a short contribution to Ms Maxwell’s motion. From the outset I would like to acknowledge Lee, Michelle and Jana, who I have seen wandering around the Parliament today, and I certainly saw them outside this morning. I am pleased that they actually can be here today to hear us speak, probably all so passionately, about this incredibly difficult and important issue.
As we know, coercive and controlling behaviour is
sadly a prominent feature in almost all family violence, but it is one of the
hardest things to identify. It is one of the hardest things, even for people
who are experiencing it, to fully articulate what is happening to them—‘It’s
just that he loves me so much, that he cares about me so much’. I am very
fortunate to be chairing the inquiry into criminal justice, a referral that
came from Ms Maxwell, and I do not think it should come as any surprise
that the witnesses that we have heard from, the submissions that we have
received, all talk about family violence and coercive behaviour. So I am really
pleased that Ms Maxwell has brought this issue to the chamber, and I am
happy to lend my encouragement to the government to do something on this.
I think it is interesting to note that in the most
recent National Summit on Women’s Safety, which was held just one or two months
ago, it was seen as one of the most complex and urgent issues. That was how it
was described in the paper that followed that summit. We have seen several
Victorian organisations, including Respect Victoria, united—
Ms Maxwell: On a point of order, Acting President, I am sitting very close to Ms Patten and it is difficult to hear her, and I just think particularly given the topic we are discussing, which goes along the lines of respect, could we just have a little bit less noise?
The ACTING PRESIDENT (Mr Bourman): Fair point. Could we keep it down so we can hear Ms Patten, please?
Ms PATTEN: Thank you, Ms Maxwell, and thank you, Acting President. As I was saying, there have been a number of organisations who have really come to the fore and are speaking loudly about this—Respect Victoria, Domestic Violence Victoria and Djirra in particular.
I think they have all looked at this. And I know
that Ms Maxwell is passionate about prevention and early intervention, and
this is another area where this is so crucial, because the criminal justice
system, as we know, currently fails so many victims. And it is sometimes a
blunt instrument, and what we need to be doing is stopping this from happening,
but we know that that is not easy. This involves cultural change. This involves
education. This involves change and equality, gender equality, and it goes into
so many different areas. So prevention in this context is complicated, but it
has to be something that we focus on.
As I say, legislating can have that effect and it
can shift norms and it can shift attitudes, but we need to shift those norms
and those attitudes and those behaviours before they turn into what they are
turning into. It is interesting—and I do not know whether it is because of the
work we are doing in the criminal justice system—that I am seeing coercive
control being discussed, being dramatised, being seen in mainstream media. You
know, Netflix has a really excellent program called Maid. It is a
US drama that looks at coercive control, and it goes through the various stages
of that control with the main character in it. Over recent weeks I have not
been listening to it but, when I was able to walk home from work in the
evenings and was comfortable doing it, I would listen to the Trap by
Jess Hill, another extraordinary podcast, an extraordinary detailed story.
Well, it is not a story, it is a whole podcast focusing on coercive control—how
it affects the children, how it affects the families, and also it goes to how
we can try and find some solutions. But, as I said, it is addressing those
underlying attitudes, which is what we need to do, but again it will be one of
the most complicated things that we do.
I was just looking at some of the press releases
that came out following that national summit, and certainly what we have been
hearing during the criminal justice inquiry is that we need to be looking at
broadening the scope of how we address this. And I note—and I use this quote
because sadly Djirra, which is an extraordinary Aboriginal women’s advocacy
organisation, was not able to appear before the committee at our last public
hearing—that Antoinette Braybrook said that the conversation around coercive
control had to be broadened:
Instead of putting money into the criminal justice
system, invest in Aboriginal Community Controlled, self-determined solutions
that we know work for our women, families and communities.
Executive director of the Multicultural Centre for
Women’s Health, Dr Adele Murdolo, who did appear before our committee,
also went on to say:
Migrant and refugee women and their communities are
already leading the way in preventing violence, and it’s time to listen and
learn from them. Whole of community and tailored approaches are needed, to
ensure that we address the structural inequalities that enable violence against
migrant and refugee women.
We know the impact that this has on women. As
Ms Maxwell and I am certain Ms Crozier raised, family violence is
still the leading contributor to death for women 15 to 44—the leading
contributor. It is not breast cancer. It is not smoking. It is not heart
disease. It is family violence. It is also the leading contributor to women
experiencing homelessness. It is the leading contributor to women being
imprisoned. Almost every woman currently in our Victorian prison is a victim—a
victim-survivor.
During our inquiry we have heard harrowing stories
from women who have been in the prison system. The fact that they had
experienced extraordinary coercive control or violence just never kind of made
it to the top. It was never really heard when they were being sentenced to
prison, and that is what we need to be doing.
Part of Ms Maxwell’s call to the government is
looking at building up this evidence base for the types and appearances of this
type of behaviour—who perpetrates it and what drives them—and community
education initiatives to increase public understanding of these behaviours and
their unacceptability. Again I would commend Jess Hill’s podcast as well as the
drama that I saw called Maid. Both go to increasing this public
understanding. And working with organisations to ensure that they do not
tacitly or overtly condone or foster attitudes and social norms that fuel
coercive control—we have heard that today and we have heard that during the
inquiry. It is not for people wanting to ignore and knowingly ignoring these
issues; it is just that they do not understand. On behalf of Victorian women,
we deserve better, and we in this chamber should be leading this change,
driving this change in community attitudes to women.
Ms BATH (Eastern Victoria) (15:16): I would like to start by thanking Ms Maxwell for bringing this important motion into the Legislative Council on the prevalence of coercive control in family violence and among the perpetrators of family violence and that it may affect multiple members within the household. The motion goes on to speak about other legislative and procedural frameworks that can improve the lives and the outcomes of those that this is severely affecting.
When I think about this topic, coercive control,
the words roll out of the dictionary: ‘interrogation’, ‘manipulation’,
‘blackmail’, ‘controlling somebody else’s will’. I guess the crux of it for me
is that there is a power imbalance. We go into relationships or there are
family relationships where there will by nature sometimes be a different
balance. A parent-child imbalance—the parent is supposed to be the carer, the
nurturer, the caregiver, the love giver, the security giver. That is in the
ideal world, and for many families that is how it is. But we know that for
thousands upon thousands of families that is not the way it is and there is a
power imbalance, and at the end of it the child is deeply affected by family
violence and, in this case, by coercive control.
There is the other side of it when the parent gets
older and they become dependent on the adult child and we see elder abuse.
There also can be a power imbalance there. For those of us who are, as I
consider myself to be, normal, the thought that that could happen is just
horrific in the extreme. But it can happen, and it does happen.
The torque between a couple where there is that
power imbalance can happen very, very slowly. It can happen like tightening the
screw on a nut. And gaslighting comes to my mind—it is a term that I have
reflected on in recent years—where your own mentality is twisted because of that
power imbalance. You are told things and your vulnerability leads you down
paths of emotional abuse, financial abuse, intimidation or sexual abuse. This
is not an equal sharing; this is when somebody’s will has been manipulated and
controlled, and it can happen. As we have said, it is not just this domestic
abuse and this coercion; it can be quite subtle.
It can have a huge effect on the children around
couples where that happens, so what should be a warm and nurturing environment
can be very cold and almost like living in a parallel world to what you think
the rest of the society is operating in. Many reports have talked about
children being that collateral damage in these coercive relationships. Reports
have said that coercion is the precursor to abusive crimes, to violence in a
relationship, and we have seen that.
If I can also start by mentioning that we talk
about victim-survivors. In the end, one really hopes that those
victim-survivors can become victim-thrivers and that they can move through that
terrible, terrible time in their life and go to a better place where they are
victims but they are thrivers. They have moved on and created a better life.
Now, for that to happen, some of the work in the background needs to be on the
perpetrator. Can the perpetrator be repurposed? Can there be prevention at the
outset when that power imbalance really starts to flow and go? Can that happen?
That is when we need people in society to be aware and awake, whether it be
their GP, whether it be a social worker, whether it be friends or family or in
an education setting—to be aware of these sorts of things and to have the
antenna up to say, ‘Is that person acting reasonably or well, or is that person
looking like they are under pressure and trying to keep away or hide what is
happening at home?’. As Ms Maxwell and others have said, there are
statistics around the evident perpetrators and the evident examples, but I
would surmise, just off the top my head, that for any one case there are
probably 10 to 20 to 30 cases that we do not see in the courts or in our
hospitals or wherever else we see them.
I would just like to thank a young university
student called Charles Rankcom, who is studying criminology. It is really great
to see that there are young men—in particular this one—studying this topic. He
has presented some interesting facts for me as well today. Alarmingly we have
seen that there has been a 9 per cent increase in family violence related
offences recorded during the 12 months of COVID to the end of June 2021.
We have seen during this reporting period 25 additional reported family
violence offences occurring each and every day—that is 25 extra. Crime
stats agencies also revealed a significant increase in several offences,
including family violence related common assault, up 5 per cent, and
breaches of family violence related orders, up 15 per cent.
When you think of some of the cases, I know
Ms Maxwell has brought in survivors who need to be part of this story, and
we have heard of other examples from Ms Crozier. One that stands out in my
mind, and we saw it on television a year ago, is that terrible case where
Hannah Clarke in New South Wales and her children died at the hands of her
estranged husband. This person was not able to be rehabilitated. They went down
that path. I just always feel so terribly devastated for the parents of Hannah
and for her extended family—her life gone and her children’s lives gone. This
must be a continual catapult to us as legislators and as a government to do
better in this realm and stop these cases.
The Victorian Family Violence Protection Act 2008
talks about family violence as physical, emotional, economic, threatening or
coercive. But coercive control is not viewed as a criminal offence, and there
is very much discussion around the importance of or the need for perpetrators
to be held accountable and responsible for their harmful behaviour. Indeed
Domestic Violence Victoria and the Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria
put out quite an extensive paper that in truth I have not had the chance to
really delve into due to other issues happening this week, but there are some
really important responses that they have unpacked. They assessed the
effectiveness of criminalising coercive control in addressing these gaps from a
victim-survivor-centred perspective. The gaps identified in the report centred
around the inadequacy of current responses to coercive control, resulting in
victim-survivor experiences not being adequately recognised or responded to
safely and consistently and perpetrators not being held to account.
Now, given the high levels of coercive control and
family violence and homicide, it is so important to get in early and to provide
those significant and compelling lessons to be learned for perpetrators.
In concluding I just want to also make some
comments around some of the great services that we have in my electorate of
Eastern Victoria Region and put a big shout-out and a thank you to the
Gippsland Centre Against Sexual Assault for providing that specialist support.
Now, not all coercive behaviour ends with sexual assault, but there is often a
direct link—that if those behaviours continue and exacerbate, certainly sexual
assault can occur. I know I have spoken with members in that great unit from
time to time. They have an outreach service. They have amazing services. They
get to the nub and they listen to people who need to be validated, respected
and understood.
The other point I make is that we do not need to
judge. You do not know when that woman comes into your shop and you serve her
shoes what her experience has been like at home. You do not know that. If she
is behaving a bit quirky, maybe we need to extend a level of sympathy or care
or ask, ‘Are you okay?’ or just give a big smile or some care, because we do
not know what people’s lives are like at home. I wish for all the
victim-survivors to become victim-thrivers in the future. We need to listen to
them. I thank Ms Maxwell for bringing this motion to the house today.
Ms TAYLOR (Southern Metropolitan) (15:27): Acknowledging that we are almost at the closure of this debate and there is so much more to be said on this incredibly important issue—family violence per se, but then those inherent elements of family violence, namely coercive control—I did just really want to acknowledge the courage and conviction of all those victim-survivors who have helped drive these incredibly important reforms and helped to shape a much brighter future for all Victorians. I do also want to acknowledge those victims who have come in today. We really appreciate their courage. I know that it probably just brings up a lot of memories and a lot of the incredibly difficult experiences that they have had to go through and survive, so we are very, very grateful for them coming here today. Thank you also for continuing this conversation, Ms Maxwell. We appreciate that.
Ms MAXWELL (Northern Victoria) (15:28): I want to thank everyone for their contributions on this important issue of coercive control today. There have been some really relevant and poignant words in your contributions. I would like to quickly just go back to what I was saying in my speech previously about the impacts of coercive control that extend to children. The child I mentioned, young Liam, was not recognised as a victim in his own right despite being subject to the coercive controlling offending of his stepfather and witnessing violence against his mother and sister time and time again.
Unless the whole picture of their offending is
presented the context is never completely understood, nor considered,
particularly within our courts. This is not just about sentencing or sentence
length; it is also about accountability and rehabilitation. If our system does
not see the full picture, how does our system really work to create change? How
is rehabilitation achieved? How does an offender have insight or take true
accountability? How do conditions on a community correction order properly
reflect the big picture if it is not known? How do perpetrator programs address
offending if the big picture is not understood?
So what now? Jurisdictions across Australia are
actively considering how coercive control is addressed within their existing
frameworks, as others have also mentioned here today. The UK criminalised
coercive control, Tasmania has a course of conduct offence and the Northern
Territory and Queensland are both reviewing their legislation to determine
criminalisation of the offence. The Scottish course of conduct offence is
considered the gold standard.
Whether coercive control is criminalised or not, we
still need to ensure that the context of behaviour is presented in courts. The
gap needs to close. We have to have that evidence being made admissible. We
have to have judges trained to understand the impacts of coercive control. In educating
our community about the violence that is coercive control there has to be an
end-to-end response that includes our justice system.
The best result of coercive control offending,
course of conduct offending, family violence offending—all violent offending—is
for it to stop. The best way to protect victims is to stop offending from
occurring in the first place. That is a big project. That is a big goal—a goal
on which for every week that someone dies at the hands of their partner or a
stranger we should remain firmly fixed, for the memory of every victim and for
the loved ones left behind.
I look forward to the review of government and hope
that it is inclusive of the voices of victim-survivors and that the issues they
face are carefully considered, be it in dealing with police, child protection,
prosecutors or in our courts. Ensuring the legal responses and preventative
measures complement each other is so imperative. There are varying views on how
we address this, but the goal is the same—to reduce the incidence of violence
and improve the safety and lives of others.
I want to thank Minister Williams for her
conversations with me. They have been ongoing on this specific topic and other
topics around family violence. We have gone back and forwards for probably a
good 18 months or more, and I am extremely inspired every time I speak to
her about her goals that she wants to achieve and the change that she wants to
make—and she has a very specific approach that has to be evidence informed, evidence
based. Once again I congratulate her, and I am extremely thankful for the time
that she has given me to introduce what I say is an extremely important motion.
I hope everybody feels the same about that, and certainly from the
contributions that we have had here today I do believe that people feel this as
passionately as I do.
I would also like to just say a quick thankyou to
Ms Crozier over there for recognising the advocacy that I have been doing
on behalf of victims, probably since Daniel Morecombe died, which is many,
many, many years ago, but
also from events and tragedies that occurred within Wangaratta. I have
been lobbying governments for many years now. On that note I thank the house,
and I look forward to working with the government to see what we can achieve
together.
Motion agreed to.
[i] Victorian Government puts $20m towards new way of reducing family violence, ABC News Online 19 August 2020
Image: Victim survivors Michelle Skewes and Jay (surname withheld), with Tania Maxwell MP, victim advocate Lee Little, and Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party member for Western Victoria Stuart Grimley MP.
I rise to speak on the Public Health and Wellbeing Amendment (Pandemic Management) Bill 2021.
I would like to thank my colleague, Mr Grimley, for his speech, which reaffirms many of my constituents’ thoughts on this bill. When we debated the Public Health and Wellbeing Amendment (State of Emergency Extension) Bill 2021 in this Parliament 14 months ago, I said it was one of the most important pieces of legislation we would ever consider, and I said that because it was about how government should be allowed to function and operate in a democracy. Our role is to scrutinise the extent to which it is appropriate for governments and public officials to seek to impose their own will over the rights, freedoms and liberties of citizens.
As we publicly declared two weeks ago, Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party will not be supporting this bill. The thousands and thousands of constituents who I have engaged with over the last 18 months, who have contacted me about this specific bill and have provided feedback about the restrictions imposed over the last 20 months—border issues, problems accessing health services, unemployment, financial losses, poor mental health and missing education—understand that we need a public health response. However, they also want those approaches to be proportionate and to allow broader considerations to other impacts.
While this bill shifts some of the powers given under the state of emergency from the chief health officer across to the minister, it still accumulates substantial power in the hands of a chosen few. Ms Patten talks about human rights and says that this is what this bill is doing. There is only one side of human rights that she is conveniently addressing here. What about those who have been and will continue to be affected by these laws—those who have lost their jobs, their lives, their livelihoods? Those people do not count today, according to Ms Patten’s speech. Those people who could not sit with a dying child or parent, those who could not seek medical attention for their cancer when the state of emergency was legislated—no, no mention of the impact that they have experienced.
The powers in this bill make it even easier for the government of the day to repeat the pattern of restrictions we have seen in force over the last 18 months. It gives little assurance there will be any change from the strategy that gave us the title of the most locked down region in the world.
I have repeatedly raised in this Parliament that these restrictions were imposed time and again on places without cases of COVID-19, places like Corryong, which only contracted its first COVID case in October this year, where children were forced out of school to remote learning, many of them in places with little or no internet. Businesses were closed, tourism shut and people mandated to wear masks in public places, even when they were alone—even when they were walking in a paddock on their own. Instead of pursuing ways to proportionately manage restrictions and apply some balance against the risk in our regional areas, these places without cases were forced to live under much of the same blanket restrictions as those living in metropolitan regions.
Echoing the concerns of Liberty Victoria, people have been deeply frustrated that neither the health advice nor other analysis that underpins these restrictions has ever been made public. This information should be made public, whether the government is legally obliged to or not. I know the government will say that if this bill is passed, they will now provide this information, but my question is: why hasn’t it been made public through the ongoing lockdowns that we have all endured across Victoria?
Following the passage of this bill it is highly likely, if not a guarantee, that this government will make a pandemic declaration immediately, even with 90 per cent of the population fully vaccinated, the curve flattened and the risk reduced as much as possible through vaccination rates. This could go on for years, even though the government says we are now living with COVID. Granted, the minister now will have to publish the health advice, but we do not really know how detailed this will be, and it does not have to be published at the same time the declaration is made. Further, if the government fails to publish the health advice, the orders are not rescinded. They stay. Liberty Victoria makes a very solid point that the responsible person should report to Parliament on any order made under the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008, not just pandemic orders, because all such matters are of public concern and we are here to serve them, not the other way around.
The focus on detention and punitive measures in the bill is also of concern to us. We cannot support a public health response that focuses on detention, exclusion, policing and fines, whether that relates to warrantless entries, extensive mandates for vaccines, curfews or border closures—and we have seen plenty of those. The detention review processes are limited to the department reviewing itself and provide little or no apparent means for other orders to be challenged. Through this pandemic we saw thousands of people excluded from entering their home state and returning to their private place of residence, some for months, and there seems to be no provision for them to have their matter reviewed. The role of the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee (SARC) in scrutinising orders is an improvement to the current situation. However, this does not happen on every order, only when they consider it necessary. The independent committee does not require representation of small business, education or mental health or an explicit understanding of regional and rural areas.
The initial state of emergency was declared on 16 March 2020 for the purpose of flattening the curve of hospitalisation and to prepare our health system. I can understand that preparing the health system for a pandemic disease is no easy feat, but I cannot understand that when our health system has been operating close to full capacity there was little means available to expand and prepare it to respond. Fixing this will be vital to supporting our health workforce in the future and ensuring we do not have to lock down citizens for 18 months instead.
I cannot speak on this bill without expressing my disappointment that three crossbenchers were actively brought into the fold of the government to participate in the development of this legislation, to the express exclusion of others. I have worked cooperatively and collaboratively with this government on important matters, including supporting victims of crime, the initiation of the Victorian Law Reform Commission review into stalking, the Better Regulation Victoria review of tobacco regulation and even last sitting week adding female-specific cancers to the list of presumptive rights for our firefighters. For the government to push this through the Legislative Assembly as it did, to skip the scrutiny of SARC and to skip public consultation or the release of an exposure draft is an opportunity lost to allow the people we serve to have their voice. These issues were raised by the president of the Victorian Bar.
The government is asking the public to trust it, but it has already compromised this trust through the lack of transparency and due diligence by which this legislation was developed. I know this legislation will pass, but I hope the government chooses very sparingly to use it.
https://media.taniamaxwell.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/27151038/TM-frame-PoV-pandemic-management-bill-211027-2-1.png788940Tania Maxwellhttps://media.taniamaxwell.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/30133823/PoV-Crest-White.pngTania Maxwell2021-11-16 23:46:062021-11-17 13:56:04Why we oppose the pandemic bill
My adjournment is to the Minister for Victim Support, and the action I seek is for the minister to review the claims for assistance for the children of Michelle Skewes, which have previously been rejected by the Victims of Crime Assistance Tribunal (VOCAT). Michelle Skewes endured years of horror at the hands of her abusive husband. He was recently jailed for a minimum of 10½ years on nine counts of rape, two counts of assault and one count of threatening to inflict serious injury. These offences occurred over a five-year period that was plagued with coercive control and degrading, pervasive abuse.
The judge noted Ms Skewes’s victim impact statement as being candid, honest and disarming in its dignity. It includes triggers of panic, moments of fear and terror, broken self-esteem, hypervigilance, distrust of others, anxiety, being plagued by nightmares and exhaustion, suffering the besmirching judgement we so often see in victim blaming and her attempts to shut off the abusing rhetoric that she endured in an attempt to reconstruct her life.
Ms Skewes has four children, three of them living. I will not give too much detail here in terms of what she has conveyed to my office about the impact of family violence on her children, but I think it is enough for us just to imagine their suffering and understand their need and their right to support. Ms Skewes has received some victim support through VOCAT, though it is quite minuscule in comparison to the five years, five months and 55 days that it took for this matter to run from report through to sentencing. She applied through VOCAT for support for her children to receive counselling; however, that was rejected. She did not have the emotional strength to appeal. These children are not considered victims in their own right, and this in itself is something that we will continue to push the government to correct.
Reforms in relation to victims of crime assistance cannot come soon enough for us. We have made some progress in increasing the recognition of children who live and witness family violence, most recently through my colleague Mr (Stuart) Grimley, who is working with Rosie Batty on calls for the standalone offence of family violence in the presence of a child. Children who witness family violence, who live in the context of family violence are victims. There is no doubt about that. This family has suffered enough, and these children deserve access to the psychological supports they need. I look forward to the minister’s urgent action on this abhorrent decision.
https://media.taniamaxwell.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/17170549/211117-TM-coercive-control-michelle-skewes.jpg14401920Tania Maxwellhttps://media.taniamaxwell.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/30133823/PoV-Crest-White.pngTania Maxwell2021-11-16 13:45:592021-11-17 17:06:08Helping the hidden victims of crime
Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party parliamentarians today opposed the Victorian government’s shutdown of the Legislative Council following yesterday’s announcement by the Premier that Melbourne’s COVID lockdown would be extended to September 2.
Member for Northern Victoria Tania Maxwell MP and Member for Western
Victoria Stuart Grimley MP said the communities they represent rightly expect
them to be in Parliament:
We did not support the government’s adjournment motion.
Parliament is safe. We are socially-distanced. Except when speaking we wear masks, we keep to our offices, we avoid contact with others, we’re not allowed visitors, and we have minimum staff to help us with our work.
Yes, COVID presents very serious risks. But Parliament is an authorised provider and can open under restrictions. We have COVID-safe plans, a check-in system and extensive security. If there was an outbreak, we’d be in a very good place to trace contacts.
It’s very frustrating to be told that by doing our job and coming to Parliament we would be breaching health advice.
What health advice are they talking about? We don’t know. We’ve not seen it. Instead, we received late yesterday a three-paragraph letter from the Chief Health Officer’s delegate telling us “all parliamentary business… should not be conducted in person”.
On this day, last year, we had a seven-day average of 257 active COVID cases. Yet we sat in Parliament. We sat on August 4, too. On that day, last year, Victoria recorded 700 new cases. So why can’t we do our jobs now?
The health advice in relation to ‘authorised workers’ currently states: “If you can work from home, you must”. But the reality is that we cannot.
We’re here because we’re elected law-makers.
Our constituents expect us to be here, as do the people of Victoria. They expect their elected representatives to be in Parliament, speaking for them, representing their views, debating issues, and passing laws.
They also expect us to be here to hold this government to account. There has never been a more important time for us to do this.
https://media.taniamaxwell.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/17144512/210707-TM-in-parliament-vjp.LC_.6_21.234.jpg12811920Tania Maxwellhttps://media.taniamaxwell.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/30133823/PoV-Crest-White.pngTania Maxwell2021-08-17 13:30:452021-08-24 12:48:38Justice Party MPs oppose Parliament shutdown
Tania
Maxwell MP has welcomed a long-awaited move by the state government to allow
Campaspe Shire Council to take the next step towards opening more land for
housing in Echuca West.
The
council is now exhibiting across the shire a proposed amendment to its planning
scheme that, once approved, would re-zone 615 hectares for urban growth and 5000
houses.
The
Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party Member for Northern Victoria said she had
questioned the Planning Minister in Parliament on June 24 about Department of
Environment, Land, Water and Planning delays preventing the council from
consulting its communities about the draft amendment.
“Housing
shortages in rural and regional Victoria are a very significant issue,” Ms
Maxwell said.
“This
is the case in almost all of the communities I represent across Northern
Victoria, but it’s especially so in larger centres like Echuca with all its
attractions and where Campaspe Shire’s population across the next 15 years is forecast
to grow 11.4 per cent to almost 43,000 residents.
“I
took the Campaspe council’s concern to Parliament and asked the Minister to
expedite the Echuca West planning scheme amendment after I became aware that
DELWP had taken six months to respond to the draft on which the council had worked
in partnership with the Victorian Planning Authority for more than four years.
“It’s
good to see the government has taken action so the council can now get on with
the next step and community consultation.
“I
spoke today with Campaspe mayor Chrissy Weller about this and congratulated the
council on its vision and persistence.”
The criminal justice system inquiry now underway in Victoria is the broadest in 30 years.
The inquiry has come about after horrific murders in Wangaratta in 2015 and 2016. A rapist on parole committed one of these crimes. The other was committed by a previously convicted violent offender who had just been released from prison for breaching parole.
These awful events spurred a community campaign called ENOUGHISENOUGH that led to my election as a parliamentarian. They’re also the reason why the inquiry’s first hearing opened in Wangaratta on June 30, this year.
The Parliament’s Legal and Social Issues Committee – of which I’m a member with six other MPs – is conducting the inquiry.
The committee is chaired by Fiona Patten who, in this video with me and deputy chair Tien Kieu, talks about the inquiry’s terms of reference. These include:
Factors influencing Victoria’s growing remand and prison populations
Ways to reduce rates of repeat offending – known as recidivism
How to ensure judges and magistrates have appropriate knowledge and expertise when sentencing and dealing with offenders, including an understanding of recidivism and the causes of crime; and
Appointment processes for judges in other jurisdictions, especially reviewing skill-sets required for judges and magistrates overseeing specialist courts.
The inquiry provides a clear opportunity for people throughout the state and especially in rural and regional communities to influence change. Voices that have long been lost in what can be daunting, complex system can now be heard. The committee wants to hear them. It also wants to host more hearings in regional communities.
So I really encourage people who’ve had both difficult and positive experiences in the criminal justice system to make a submission. This video sets out how the inquiry works, what it’s examining, and how you can participate.
Find out how to make a submission. Or if you need advice about the process you can call the committee staff on 03 8682 2869. My statement about the inquiry also provides more details.
Please have your say.
https://media.taniamaxwell.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/07163541/210707-PoV-Wangaratta-criminal-justice-inquiry-wangaratta-hearing-video-still.jpg600947Tania Maxwellhttps://media.taniamaxwell.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/30133823/PoV-Crest-White.pngTania Maxwell2021-07-07 16:32:222021-07-20 11:00:19Help improve our criminal justice system