Thursday, 21 March 2024

Committees

Legal and Social Issues Committee

Reference

Vicki WARD (Eltham – Minister for Prevention of Family Violence, Minister for Employment) (12:45): I move:

That this house refers an inquiry into the mechanisms for capturing data on the profile and volume of perpetrators of family violence in Victoria and barriers to achieving a full understanding of this cohort to the Legal and Social Issues Committee for consideration and report no later than 26 November 2024.

The Allan Labor government is unrelenting in our commitment to ending family violence. Since holding the nation’s first Royal Commission into Family Violence and implementing all 227 ‍recommendations, Victoria has invested over $3.86 billion in reforming the way we respond to and prevent family violence. Some of our key reforms include the establishment of the Orange Door network, which includes more than 36 safety hubs and access points across the state; establishment of Victoria’s first dedicated primary prevention agency, Respect Victoria; and investment in over 95 ‍grassroots prevention initiatives to help local communities challenge harmful beliefs and behaviours, including the delivery of 41 capacity-building elements, including the Mate bystander sessions, gender equality training and forums. We have partnered with Aboriginal Victorians through the Dhelk Dja agreement to provide culturally safe spaces for community and services. We have trained over 200,000 workers across the community sector in our multi-agency risk assessment and management framework to ensure we keep people safe by adequately addressing their level of risk and increased the frontline specialist family violence workforce fivefold. And we have done so much more.

Violence in our homes, particularly gender-based violence against women and violence against children or children who are witness to violence, remains a serious issue. It is still a choice that too many Victorians are making. More needs to be done to ensure that we can identify people using or at risk of using violence early so that we can interrupt that trajectory and prevent further harm and reduce recidivism. It is important to note that establishing support services for perpetrators has increased the number of people independently asking for help on how to manage violent and abusive behaviours. This includes presenting to our Orange Doors.

As we continue to build the capacity of the sector to identify and respond to family violence risk, we must continue to look for opportunities to ensure that we are capturing valuable data on the number and profile of people – who we know are most often men – who are choosing to use violence. With this in mind, this motion asks the Legal and Social Issues Committee to consider ways in which the government, through our social services and partner agencies, many of whom are working directly with those who have chosen to use violence, can collaborate to understand this important data. It is critical that the government receives an accurate picture of those who are choosing to use violence against family members. It is through accurate data collection that we can continue to focus our efforts on prevention and working to support those who have chosen to use violence against people they love or once loved. I look forward to the recommendations of this committee, and I recommend this referral to the house.

Emma KEALY (Lowan) (12:49): It is a great pleasure, although the content of the motion is of course of great concern. The coalition of course, the Liberals and Nationals, support this motion to refer an inquiry to be focused on the mechanisms of capturing data on the profile and volume of perpetrators of family violence in Victoria and the barriers to achieving a full understanding of this cohort to the Legal and Social Issues Committee for consideration and report no later than 26 November 2024.

Acting Speaker Farnham, before your time in this chamber, I held the portfolio of Shadow Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence, and over that period of time I was able to work closely with the former family violence reform implementation monitor and speak to many individuals who were victims of family violence right across the state.

I also had the opportunity to speak to perpetrators of family violence, and it was very, very clear in speaking to these unique cohorts – and I should add also the Orange Door and other counsellors and people who were providing support or education to victims of family violence or support and rehabilitation programs to perpetrators of family violence – that there were significant deficiencies. This was extraordinarily disappointing to everybody in the sector, because there has of course been a Royal Commission into Family Violence, which was handed down in this place in 2015. There is no doubt that now people are more willing to come forward. They are more educated in understanding what a red flag is, who they can reach out and get support from and where they can go to seek that support. I think there is also greater awareness in the community from men in understanding when they are stepping over a line. That first little step towards unacceptable behaviour and violence is perhaps the time that we need to get assistance or support, rather than what we often hear about family violence, which is that you reach out for help when things are horrifically bad and you have got police constantly at your doorstep or you are in hospital suffering incredible injuries from these sorts of incidents as well.

We also need to make sure there are alternative mechanisms for people in a relationship where they can look at working out how they can deal with those red flags where inappropriate behaviour is happening before it escalates, because there are so many women, particularly women with children, who do not want the only option available to them to be to leave the house now. Generally, women want to try and fix it. We need to make sure they are given the appropriate tools to fix it, which is not just to accept the flowers and the apology and the 5 minutes of ‘It’s my fault. We need to sort this out. You’re the best. Love you, babe.’ We need to make sure that that behaviour stops and that in whatever circumstance we can try and keep that relationship and family unit together where it is safe to do so.

These are not just my thoughts; these are issues that have come through as part of numerous reports by previous family violence reform implementation monitors. The first family violence reform implementation monitor, Tim Cartwright, published a number of reports in his time in the office of the family violence reform implementation monitor, and he highlighted in the very early stages his concerns about the implementation of the recommendations. That concern followed through in the work of the subsequent family violence reform implementation monitor, Jan Shuard PSM, who flagged her concerns. I recall a report that flagged her concerns that the implementation of the recommendations was not achieving the desired outcome for the changes that the system required, so that women and children in particular were better supported by the system when they came forward needing support in a family violence situation. I do not have the report in front of me, but there was a report which was released in either December 2022 or December 2021 – I think it was in 2021. There was a specific reflection from the family violence reform implementation monitor where she captured the concern of one person who worked within the system that the implementation of the recommendations felt like a ‘tick the box’ exercise. That was always the concern of the sector – that while we had a large number of recommendations to be implemented, it seemed like they were simply being allocated out to individuals in a large office and there was never a level of cohesiveness around how perpetrators were handled and supported and how victim-survivors were handled and supported.

It is interesting to note that, while I personally heavily advocated for the family violence reform implementation monitor office to continue into the future, it was actually an election commitment that the Liberals and Nationals took to the last election: that we do acknowledge that the aspirations of the royal commission were not implemented in the way that we had hoped, that it had not achieved those goals and that we should continue to have somebody in the family violence reform implementation monitor role.

Jan Shuard’s last report was actually subtitled ‘Service response for perpetrators and people using violence within the family’. There are excellent recommendations within that report. While Jan in that family violence implementation monitor role finished up at the end of 2022 – the funding was ceased at the end of last financial year – I encourage this committee to reflect upon Jan’s work and Tim’s work and reflect upon the impact of putting out media releases rather than making a meaningful difference to the support of victim-survivors of family violence and also to ensure we have got sufficient supportive mechanisms in place to support perpetrators who are doing the wrong thing in those earlier stages to stop it from getting to a harmful position where women and children are being mentally, financially, physically and emotionally traumatised through violence. We support the motion.

Motion agreed to.