The Queensland Government today announced a historic overhaul of laws and practices to better protect women from domestic and family violence and hold perpetrators to account.
The proposed $363 million package of reforms announced by Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Attorney-General and Minister for Women Shannon Fentiman this morning includes:
- new laws and programs to recognise, prevent and punish coercive control including making coercive control a criminal offence
- a commission of inquiry into police practices
- expansion of the domestic and family violence courts
- better support for women
- a special strategy for First Nations communities
- funding for perpetrator programs to change men’s behaviour and stop the cycle of violence
- expansion of high-risk teams and co-responder models to ensure victims receive a joint response from police and DFV services
- increased respectful relationships education to all Queensland children and young people.
All are the result of Justice Margaret McMurdo’s Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce’s first report, ‘Hear Her Voice’, handed down in December.
“The taskforce received more than 700 submissions from women and girls with lived experience of domestic and family violence,” Ms Palaszczuk said. “In addition, women have literally taken to the streets to say ‘enough is enough’.
“My government has heard. My government has listened. My government is acting.”
Queensland Law Society welcomed the supportive response of the Queensland Government to the taskforce report.
“QLS has consistently supported measures aimed at addressing domestic and family violence and its consequences,” QLS President Kara Thomson said. “The report and its recommendations are of exceptional value to Queensland community and we acknowledge the importance of this work.
“We look forward to working with the Government on measures to implement the recommendations to better ensure the safety of all in our community.
“In particular, QLS is keen to engage with recommendations to strengthen Queensland lawyers’ understanding of the nature and impact of domestic and family violence, including coercive control, the substantive and procedural law, and how to refer clients to services and supports.”
Coercive control
Before the end of 2023, a Bill will be introduced to criminalise coercive control.
Coercive control is the most common factor leading up to intimate partner homicide. Its tragic outcome was recently seen in the murders of Hannah Clarke and her three children.
It includes isolating a partner from family and friends, monitoring their movements, controlling access to money and psychological and emotional manipulation.
The package of reforms to address this problem includes a community education campaign to recognise it, the expansion of respectful relationship courses and further training for police.
It also includes $106 million to improve safety for victims attending court.
Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Minister for Woman and the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence Shannon Fentiman said this was a key recommendation of the taskforce.
“Our systems need to respond better to this unique form of violence and we need to shift our focus from responding to single incidents of violence to the pattern of abusive behaviour that occurs over time,” she said.
“We will also explore options to improve availability and accessibility of intervention programs for DFV perpetrators. Intervening to help perpetrators change their behaviour is essential to keeping victims safe from violence.
“We will look to continue and expand trials of online perpetrator interventions and programs addressing violence perpetrated by young men against a parent.”
Commission of inquiry
The taskforce made it clear that hardworking police save the lives of women and children escaping domestic and family violence every day.
But it also found many survivors had not received an adequate response.
A four-month commission of inquiry will hear the testimony of victims and make recommendations to improve their treatment.
The Attorney-General said that, in addition, Queensland Police Service would trial a collaborative co-response model involving police and specialist DFV services working together in a number of locations.
“A key focus of the reforms will be to build understanding of DFV and coercive control across the agency to help police improve how they respond to these matters,” the Attorney said.
“Officers need to be able to better identify DFV as a pattern of behaviour over time and assess risk for coercive control and non-physical forms of violence.
“We will act to develop specialist expertise and training in DFV, and improve the frontline response to incidents through development of a manual to guide officers.”
Hannah Clarke’s parents, Sue and Lloyd, have welcomed the Government’s response.
“As our foundation, Small Steps 4 Hannah tries to achieve, this is all about HALTing the cycle of domestic and family violence,” Mr Clarke said.
“H’ for Hanna, ‘A’ for Aalya, ‘L’ for Laianah and ‘T’ for Trey, the members of our family who we have lost.”
The Premier said confronting the reality of domestic and family violence was the most important step in dealing with it.
“Not one of us can deal with this issue,” she said. “It will take all of us.”
The taskforce has already made 89 recommendations, 84 of which were for the Government. It has accepted all 84. The remaining five were for the Queensland Law Society and the Bar Association of Queensland.
The final taskforce report is due by the end of June.
More information on the women’s safety and justice taskforce.
2 Responses
Good to see we are protecting only women and girls. Because, as we all know, men and boys cannot be victims and victims cannot lie. I look forward to my son growing up in a world where he, for no other reason than his sex, will be suspected as a possible domestic abuser, will have to contend with the full force of the law if he makes a poor choice in partner, and will be deemed less worthy of protection if he is ever so unfortunate to be domestically abused. He will have the full DV propaganda shoved down his throat at school, with ‘increased respectful relationships education to all Queensland children and young people.’ Something to look forward to.
‘Minister for Women’ indeed. Women have never had it better in the history of this country, and yet here we are, handing over a third of a billion dollars to feed the DV industry, all the while ignoring that men and boys are more likely to be victims of violence than women and girls.
Anyone who has worked in this space, as I do, knows how easy it is to fabricate or exaggerate claims of domestic abuse for ulterior motives; whether to make it easier to control a partner or former partner, gain a tactical advantage in family law proceedings, or to vindictively punish someone and make it impossible for them to see their children. But we must pretend this is not so.
Now we have this nebulous term of coercive control, where a selfish narcissist can make a domestic violence complaint for pretty much any behaviour she doesn’t like. No disagreeing about money anymore, that’s domestic violence. No arguing full stop, that’s domestic violence. No having a different version of past events from one’s spouse, that’s ‘gaslighting’ and domestic violence. No suggesting that a person is dressed inappropriately or should take better care of themselves, that’s domestic violence. The list goes on. You won’t hear any complaints from DV and Family Law lawyers though, they’ll have more work than ever.
It should be obvious that I am not saying domestic violence doesn’t happen. There is an entire government, media and DV industry machine amplifying it every day. But the ‘men bad’ advocates have so thoroughly infected the conversation that we can’t have a truthful discussion. The advocates have made it about sex, when we should really be abhorring violence against everybody, regardless of background or ingrained characteristics.
I have with great interest read your reply.
However I note the fears for your son and how easy he may be both legally and socially disadvantaged due to his gender in the event of an unfortunate and already painful relationship breakdown.
I suggest that your concerns are not that of a crystal ball or unwarranted concern for the future of your son.
I am there now. And in hindsight I can see how the situation was manipulated and artificially created. There is a medical issue with my daughter for which I am completely excluded of any knowledge or input.
Every now and then a little information (yet incomplete) would be drip fed to me. Then every text message or attempt to contact my ex wife with the content solely seeking answers to my daughters health situation would be ignored.
No threat of violence. No act of intimidation at all. Just pleading for information. I am completely, without any authority of the court, kept from seeing my daughter. Now I am worried sick about her health.
I get told to talk to the doctor. I make an appointment to see the doctor and it is promptly cancelled. I received a promise of a call from the doctor and it never eventuates. I send several emails to the doctor and no response .
Now I am threatened with a protection order due to harassment because I should have known by her not returning a text that she didn’t want to talk to me.
She could have returned a text and told me she didn’t want to talk to me.
Even though each time she would drop a little information it would include a promise of a following text with results or updates. That would never happen.
Her solicitor then advises that all contact is to be directed through him if I am to avoid the protection order. He said provide him with a list of questions for which I seek answers and he will provide the answers.
I subsequently send him a letter with the questions which he ignored. Not even a letter telling me he’s not going to honour his advice.
Every time I seek legal assistance I am met with “just don’t do anything. The courts will not look favourably on the issue”.
But my favourite piece of well researched legal advice from no less than 6 solicitors (all with family law credentials from the QLS) is “family courts are no place for fathers”.