Wednesday, 26 August 2026

 Chris COUZENS (Geelong) (10:15): I am pleased to rise to contribute on the Legislative Assembly Legal and Social Issues Committee inquiry into the recruitment methods and impacts of cults and organised fringe groups report Crossing the Line: Coercion and Harm in High Control Groups. I quote from submission 205:

They taught us what to say if the authorities ever came. Over and over, we rehearsed what to say, how to smile, how to protect our abusers. Safety wasn’t just absent, it was inverted. The people who hurt us claimed they were saving us. The people who could help us were framed as the enemy!

This is just one of the lived experiences quoted in the report. I want to acknowledge the bravery and strength of survivors who shared their experiences in high-control groups through submissions, surveys and public hearings.

I want to put on record that the referral of this inquiry came about because a group of people with lived experience recognised the need for significant change to protect, support and assist people who wanted to leave or who had already left a high-control group. They wanted the harm to stop. This was led by Ryan and Catherine Carey, with support from journalist Richard Baker and others. That group should be very proud. Their advocacy mattered. The lived experience which they shared provided the platform needed to create a pathway for change. Their courage to step up and share their lived experience with the Attorney-General created this world-leading inquiry. Throughout the inquiry the committee heard from many more people with lived experience. The strong level of engagement proved how significant this inquiry was.

I want to acknowledge the incredible work undertaken by the Legal and Social Issues Committee secretariat, headed up by Jess and her team. I also thank and acknowledge the commitment and significant work undertaken by the committee. I am extremely proud of the work we have done, led by the chair, the member for Lara; the deputy chair, the member for Euroa; the member for Werribee; the member for Eildon; the member for Clarinda; the member for Bayswater and the member for Prahran.

The committee received 291 submissions and 317 responses to the online questionnaire, held eight days of hearings and met with a number of key stakeholders. The contributions from so many people with lived experience of coercive high-control groups gave the committee the essential insights into how these groups operate, how harms develop and where current systems fail to respond effectively. Submission 258 states:

I am 31, but I have missed some developmental milestones in terms of learning to set appropriate boundaries, learning how to express myself and how to even determine what I want … I don’t really know how to make friends in “the world” as it is something that I have practiced not doing my whole life.

I do not have time to cover all of the 39 recommendations in this report. However, I want to focus on recommendations 1, 2 and 3, which play a critical role in the implementation of all of the recommendations. Recommendation 1 is that:

The Victorian Government establish a formal lived experience advisory body, including professional expertise, to co-design, inform and evaluate legislative, policy and service reforms addressing the impacts of coercive high-control groups, including for the purposes of progressing the implementation of the recommendations in this Report.

Of course lived experience in this report matters. Recommendation 2 is that:

The Victorian Government ask the Victorian Law Reform Commission to review legislative options to criminalise group-based coercion, with the Commission to report by July 2028 to support the introduction of legislation by February 2029.

This recommendation outlines the details of the referral. It has been an absolute privilege to be a member of the Legal and Social Issues Committee undertaking this inquiry. I am not going to have time to continue on many of the recommendations, but I do want to again say what a privilege it was to work with those people with lived experience, to work with such an incredible secretariat and of course to work with members of the committee, who were so committed to this inquiry. It has been such an experience and probably one of the most challenging that I have been involved with in all the years that I have been involved in committee work, to have those brave people sit in front of us and tell their story. I commend this report to the house.