Wednesday, 26 August 2026

 Cindy McLEISH (Eildon) (11:01): It was 3 December 2025, Jess Wilson had been Leader of the Opposition for a couple of weeks, and her first announcement was the criminalisation of coercive control. I introduced a private members bill and I had support from the other parties and the crossbench, and I am confident that these were the actions that forced the government into bringing this bill forward. So here we are now; on 11 August the government introduced this legislation. In a nutshell, this is something that everybody wants to see. It aims to prioritise the safety of victims of family violence and introduces some new crimes here to look at tackling the efficiency of the justice processes and more effectively holding perpetrators of family violence to account.

Family violence and intimate partner violence in the main is perpetrated by men on women, but not always. It is important that gender is not ignored in family violence, because we have incidents of women on men, men on men and women on women. But in the main it is perpetrated by men on women. The bill makes changes to a number of areas, and I will talk about each of those in some detail: coercive control, good character, grooming and a number of other areas that I will touch on.

I want to begin by recognising the victims of family violence, those who have lost their lives and those who have survived and are living with it, and their role in shaping the sector and particularly this bill. I also want to recognise the agencies and organisations that were consulted during the period in which it was developed and others who work in that sector day in, day out and who have helped shape the legislation. The work that those agencies and organisations do cannot be underestimated. It is not always easy. In fact most of the time it is not easy. They deal with some pretty horrific situations that they need to deal with, but a lot of them are able to do it and navigate and help people.

As we move into the debate here, I want to be very clear that the government should not try to rewrite history, because, as I said, we put this on the table. Why I put it on the table was that it was clear we needed to do more. Things in Victoria were heading in the wrong direction. I looked at what was happening overseas. Theresa May, former PM of the United Kingdom, as Home Secretary in December 2014, almost 12 years ago, announced plans for a new criminal offence targeting coercive control. She argued at the time that domestic abuse is not limited to physical violence, that psychological domination can be equally devastating and that specific criminal laws were needed because traditional assault laws did not adequately capture the patterns of psychological and emotional domination. She had seen and spoken to victims of family violence who did not have broken bones and who did not have bruises but who had psychological scars, and she wanted to do something for them. At the end of December 2015 it became law, and we have now had more than a decade of learnings. So there was no reason why Victoria should be lagging in this area, and I think it was a blight on us for lagging.

I visited the UK earlier in 2025 and I visited the Thames Valley Police. I visited two of the largest organisations in the UK, Refuge and Hestia, and all of those organisations supported the introduction of coercive control measures. They were at pains to say, ‘It’s a slow burn. You’re not going to get immediate results. It is difficult, but you can get results.’ Awareness campaigns and education campaigns are particularly important, and they raised a couple of issues or examples with me of what helped them. Unbeknown to me, EastEnders is still running in the UK, their version of Home and Away or Neighbours, and they ran a coercive control theme through EastEnders. It got people understanding and recognising as they watched the TV, thinking ‘That’s actually not quite right. That person should not be doing that, and gosh, that’s scary’. They recognised these sorts of things as coercive control, and it helped.

At the same time as this was bedding down, there was a case between Richard and Sheree Spencer outlining 20 years of abuse, which captured – probably a bit like the mushroom cook – the attention of so many people over there. It was eventually documented. Netflix documented this, and there was a lot of video and evidence in this case, because it was Richard who was the subject of the 20 years of abuse. The Netflix series was called My Wife, My Abuser. So it became clear in the UK that although in the main it is women who are subjected to coercive control actions, it can also be men. I know when we announced our intent to criminalise coercive control I had a lot of people come and say to me, ‘This is not just a men-on-women situation. It can happen to men.’ People cited examples in their family of exactly what has happened. But it can also happen in same-sex relationships and in all sorts of different families. It is not just specific.

Despite the Royal Commission into Family Violence, and we have had a huge financial investment, we still need to do more. The stats are not heading in the right direction. Across Australia too many women continued to be killed by an intimate partner. At the moment across Australia the estimates are about 42 to 45 women and girls killed by a male or intimate partner this year. It is a bit difficult to get exact stats because sometimes they are not always clear about what exactly has happened. In Victoria there was a record 106,427 call-outs of family violence incidents last year, up 8 per cent in five years – pretty extraordinary. I remember when it hit over the 100,000 call-outs for police. Breaches of family violence orders have risen even faster, increasing by almost 17 per cent to 64,713. About one in four family violence incidents resulted in a new intervention order application. But the figure that is of great concern is that almost one in four of those orders were subsequently breached. An intervention order is supposed to provide protection and security, and I am sure that every person in this place, all members, would have heard from somebody who is a victim of family domestic violence who has had an intervention order breached. We hear that so much in my office. Sometimes they are constituents, sometimes there are people reaching out to talk to me.

So more needs to be done, and this bill is one step in the right direction. Following our private members bill, the government did feel the pressure from the Parliament, victim-survivors and the community and move for this introduction. At the same time they have sought feedback from victim-survivors to make a few additional changes, so this bill goes further than what we had. I have mentioned that family violence does not discriminate on age, wealth, culture or sexuality. But again, in the main, it is women who tend to be victims.

The bill tackles a number of areas, and I will work through each of those. But first is coercive control. It is an amendment to the Crimes Act 1958, and it can involve things like intimidation, humiliation, surveillance, isolation and manipulation designed to control another person and strip away their independence and confidence. I do note that humiliation has not been included in the list here. Victims can lose their financial independence. They can lose their homes, their health and their connection with family and friends. It has not been a criminal offence unless another crime had been committed or an intervention order had been breached. Now we have a maximum here of 10 years.

We have not only the examples that I have talked about from the UK, but both New South Wales and Queensland have implemented this legislation. There have been 28 reports a month in New South Wales, with one custodial sentence. Queensland’s legislation came into effect in May 2025, and it takes time for these prosecutions to be worked through. They had 149 reports between 26 May and 26 ‍October – a short period of time. They resulted in 53 charges: 43 were solved or finalised. Seventy reports remain active or unsolved. The UK figures: 853 offenders were convicted of controlling or coercive behaviour in the year ending December 2024. There were nearly 1300 defendant proceedings for the offence in the same period: 832 defendants were male and 21 were female. Police recorded almost 50,000 coercive control offences in the year ending March 2025, up from 45,000. This is not a silver bullet, but it needs to be done and I am pleased that the government are finally doing this. It is so important that it is rolled out effectively, with an appropriate awareness campaign. Yesterday there was the launch of See the Signs, a program that will be running out a series of ads. The timeframe for introduction is 18 months, which actually I had hoped would be a little bit earlier, because the other states have moved and have this in place, and there would be a lot that we should be able to pick up and adapt from them.

Coercive control has been covered quite a bit in various books and in the media, and Jess Hill has a book, See What You Made Me Do. She is a journalist, and her book was an investigation into domestic abuse. I will tell you, it is fairly harrowing, with the examples that she brings. I heard her speak at a two-day workshop that I attended on coercive control in Sydney last year, and there was certainly no talk that Victoria was looking at going down this path. I want to touch on some of the things that Jess Hill mentioned as a blueprint for establishing power. One is getting that love and trust, which brings people together in the first place. Sometimes people are deliberately lulled into a false sense of security, and they forgive and make excuses for behaviours and indiscretions. Isolation – victims can be removed from their support mechanisms like family and friends. They will move them away. They will stop them from seeing people, saying, ‘I want you all to myself, such is my love for you.’ People might feel special for a start, but then they see less and less of family and friends.

The monopolisation of perception is focusing on sometimes her faults and failures and doubts. People say, ‘What am I doing wrong? Why am I being told that I’m not good enough here or I can’t do that? The problem is me, and he’s really trying to help me out, and then my self-confidence is shot.’ Gaslighting is particularly common, which is really exhausting and debilitating. It is playing these mind games. There are denials and fabrications, manipulation of situations, hiding things, and people start to say, ‘Hang on, am I mad? Did I imagine this?’ And it just keeps building: ‘Yes, I am. Of course I did this. Of course this happened,’ and they really start to doubt. Sometimes people enforce trivial demands, like living by rules of what you have to wear, who you can visit, how the potatoes are cooked ‍– little things. I heard an example the other day of someone who was heading out on a first date, and the person she was going out with wanted to know what she was wearing. He said, ‘You’re wearing a dress, aren’t you?’ Pleasingly, that person did not go on that first date. It was before the first date that the person she was excited by, initially, was demonstrating the red flags that we should all be aware of: the tracking, the surveillance and making the victim know that ‘I know where you are’. Something else that is quite prevalent is the alternating punishment and rewards – hurting somebody and then showering them with kindness and going, ‘I’m so remorseful’. Then it happens again, and if they break down, the comfort is there. And there are the threats – people living in fear – and the degradation of verbal abuse: ‘You’re worthless.’

One of the books that I read recently is by Tammy Casselson, The Grimmest of Fairy Tales, and she documented her lived experience, outlining red flags that she put aside. She was married young, and the book talks about the distressing married life that she had and the pressure from family and friends because he was a good bloke. They liked him. This is a direct quote from her book:

Over time, little red flags kept appearing. I, now a young woman, mostly-smiling-and-making-the-best-out-of-life, would make excuses for the red flags. Of course, sometimes it was a survival strategy – just managing the red flags.

But hindsight sadly can be the greatest skill. It is too easy for people to make excuses, especially when, to the external world, somebody looks great. You might look like the happy couple. He is a great bloke at work. Everybody likes him or her. Family and friends think this is a terrific person. ‘You can’t look at leaving this relationship. You know, you’ve got kids. This is a great person. He treats you well.’ So I am very pleased to see now that something is being done in this area.

Good character is another area that is being tackled through this, and the references. Too often those impacted by family violence have to listen in court as their perpetrator is described as being of good character, and that can be humiliating when the person has been treated abysmally and has had all sorts of things happen. This bill stops courts from giving offenders a lighter sentence because of their previous good character, while still allowing relevant personal circumstances and criminal history to be considered. It tightens the rules around character references and applies similar standards to children sentenced under the Youth Justice Act 2024.

Earlier this year the New South Wales government removed good character as a mitigating factor for sexual offences. This did not come out of the blue. For four years Harrison James and Jarad Grice, survivors of sexual abuse, were advocates for this to happen, and there was a campaign calling for good character references to be abolished called Your Reference Ain’t Relevant. Stakeholder feedback noted that these good character references can be particularly problematic in family violence matters, where the person using violence may present very differently in public and private, as I have just mentioned.

The Equal Opportunity Act 2010 will also be amended, and family violence will be a protected attribute. This will ensure victim-survivors should not be disadvantaged because they have taken steps to keep themselves or their families safe. These changes will make it unlawful to discriminate against someone because they have experienced family violence, whether at work, when seeking accommodation, accessing education or using services. Stakeholder feedback told me that this change also imposes a positive duty. It was something that they saw. It imposes a positive duty on organisations to take proactive steps to eliminate discrimination based on this attribute. It is a good thing to start to have a think that this person is going through some pretty harrowing experiences, and let us make sure that they are not discriminated against.

I have heard an example of this quite recently, brought to me by somebody who I know personally, regarding one of their good friends who fled family violence. Sadly, she had to flee interstate. She is now back. She worked in a local government area, at one of the councils, and they held her job and did the right thing and really looked after her. She has had a horrendous experience, and it is still not over because of the number of adjournments that keep happening in court. She keeps having to live through all of it when she thinks it is about to be resolved and perhaps her perpetrator will be jailed. It is just another couple of months for her and her children and then it is another couple of months. It bothers me greatly. I do note that the amendment here is consistent with the positive duties imposed on workplaces to eliminate sex discrimination under the Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Act ‍1984, and that has been welcomed by stakeholders.

There are changes to family violence and personal safety. These changes put victim-survivors first by reducing the need to repeatedly return to court and relive the trauma simply to maintain their protection. That is a good thing, because every time you have to go back to court – not everywhere has a family violence court with separate entrances – you can bump into the perpetrator. The family violence courts have been terrific. If you go and see them in action, people do not have to see each other and can give testimony without that. They are terrific. They are not everywhere at the moment. Limiting the number of times people have to go to court is certainly positive. The courts will have greater ability to extend or strengthen intervention orders while taking into account what the victim-survivor believes they need to be safe.

Grooming is another area. Grooming is something that we have talked about for a long time because we have had a lot of sexual abuse claims and inquiries. People have got a reasonable understanding about grooming, but perhaps it is not as good as it should be. The bill allows PSIOs, the personal safety intervention orders, to be used against adults engaging in grooming behaviour, helping to protect children and stop predatory behaviour before it escalates to sexual offending.

I received an email from GenWest, and I want to give them a shout-out because they have just run body safety education groups for families in the west. The lack of knowledge about grooming in the community was striking. We might think we have done a lot of work here, but they were alarmed by this. They have had very strong feedback that families want more education in this area. While the government is looking at the education program around this legislation, and I know it is focusing on coercive control, giving some attention to what more could be done in the area of education about grooming needs to happen.

There are changes being made to MARAM. MARAM is the multi-agency risk assessment management framework, which people talk to me about very positively. It was developed to identify and address issues and gaps. The royal commission talked about how this was needed so services can effectively identify, assess and manage family violence risk. It is, as I said, viewed positively. The bill aims to strengthen how organisations and professionals assess family violence risk and share information, helping services better protect victim-survivors and hold perpetrators to account. That is what they want to do. Stakeholders again like the emphasis on timely information sharing for risk assessment and management.

The criminal court variations are interesting because the bill introduces own-motion powers. I had a lot of feedback about this. With the consent of the victim the court may extend or vary a family violence intervention order. Ordinarily a criminal court does not deal with civil applications; sometimes they might be co-listed. But if a perpetrator is in a criminal court for assault, for example, the judge may see it as necessary to extend or vary the FVIO with the intent of streamlining the process. It saves the victim another trip to court and the stress of fronting up. I had considerable feedback about this. The criminal court may not have the full picture of the ongoing family violence risk because it is only working with what has come up in the criminal proceedings rather than that fuller picture of family violence. I met with Women’s Legal Service Victoria and heard from them and others as part of the Federation of Community Legal Centres family violence working group, which did have concerns about incomplete, outdated information or a focus on a single incident rather than something broader. I thank the minister’s office for their discussions with me on this area, because if the judge thinks it is clear that they do not have the full picture, they do not need to make a variation or an extension. They can say, ‘Look, in this case there are a whole lot of other things happening. This does need to go back to the other court.’ I thank Eliza from the minister’s office for talking to me about that.

Clarifying electronic signatures on family violence and personal safety intervention order documents is fine, and addressing fines and infringements by providing greater support to fine recipients experiencing vulnerability and disadvantage is also fine. That includes excessive speeding and court fines, whereas it is currently only available to infringement fines. The government certainly consulted on this. The Victim Survivors’ Advisory Council was somebody they dealt with quite extensively, and that was established following the royal commission. As I said before, I certainly acknowledge their role and the experiences that they bring to the table, and I note that there have been another eight people moving into that council, that advisory body, whereas others are moving out.

So many women and families have contacted me to share their awful family violence stories. Family members of men who have been subject to coercive control talk to me all the time, so I know that this is important. Misidentification, where the wrong person gets blamed as the perpetrator, is a big problem, and I will stress this is particularly relevant to First Nations women and also the LGBTI community. Everybody raised misidentification. There is that awareness around that, and I know with the police there is awareness of that as well to get better in this area. Somebody who works in the legal area said to me the other day how they managed to get that misidentification turned around, and she goes, ‘Oh, it only took three times at court.’ I thought, ‘It still had to happen three times to go to court.’ She said, ‘Sometimes it’s a little bit easier, but often it’s not.’ When somebody is incorrectly labelled as a perpetrator, the process to change that should not be as difficult as it is. I acknowledge pretty well everybody in the sector said, ‘This is a problem. It’s hard to quantify the extent of it. It’s not massive but it’s there, and it’s there too much; it’s there too often.’ That awareness needs to continue.

I consulted widely and received so many responses, and I thank the stakeholders who came back to me with detailed responses, thoughtful responses, that they have taken so much care and effort with, not just about this bill but about the future, the focus on prevention and resourcing and how important that is and the fact that legislation alone will not fix problems and we need to do more. There is one that I want to mention as well. One stakeholder expressed reservation about the way the bill treats carers. If they are caring with support from the NDIS – this is an example – would they be excluded? As we know, the carer role, even by intimate partners, can become abusive, and at the very least this would need to be monitored closely and the unintended consequence of this provision to allow coercive control in these circumstances may need amendments or revision. I do note that there is a statutory review, and I think that was in three years.

There is more to do, and one of the things that I would like to see the government do, which we have committed to doing, is the introduction of Clare’s law – the introduction of a domestic violence disclosure scheme. This would be the right to ask and the right to know. For those people who may not be aware, Clare’s law was introduced in the UK after the tragic murder of Clare Wood by a former partner with a history of violence. The scheme allows individuals to request information from police about a partner’s violence, which is the right to ask, and places an onus on police to proactively disclose information if they identify a risk, which is the right to know. I implore the government to get on board with the coalition and introduce Clare’s law here in Victoria.

I know Jo Cooper has done an enormous amount of work – her petition was signed by thousands of women – to try and introduce a national scheme. But again I want to talk about the South Australian scheme. It is up and running, and it is a good model that Victoria could pick up. The media over there reports a 172 per cent increase in people asking about their partners. An assistant commissioner last year said:

I have no doubt it can save lives and it probably does …

Since its introduction in the UK tens of thousands of people have asked questions. Last year, 2024–‍25, nearly 90,000 people asked questions and there were 38,000 disclosures. Forty-two per cent of people that asked a question had a disclosure made. That is just staggering. South Australia has had 2500 ‍applications, with 1064 disclosures, since its inception in December 2024.

Clare’s law will be introduced in Victoria under a Liberal government, and I urge the government now to get on board, because it has been lagging in this. Introducing coercive control legislation has been a positive move on our back. As I said, it was Jess Wilson’s first announcement that she would criminalise coercive control. The government have done that now, and I am pleased to see that and to support this bill.

 Ros SPENCE (Kalkallo – Minister for Corrections, Minister for Victim Support, Minister for Youth Justice, Minister for Community Sport) (11:31): I am very pleased to speak today on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Family Violence, Coercive Control, Good Character, Risk Assessment and Other Matters) Bill 2026. This bill is about listening to victim-survivors and responding to their needs. Victim-survivors have told us what is needed to keep them safe and deliver better outcomes. This bill delivers a range of significant reforms which prioritise victim-survivor safety, improve the efficiency of justice processes and ensure perpetrators of all forms of family violence are held to account. Before I speak to the detail of the bill I want to acknowledge all of the victims, particularly the women and children, who have been impacted by family violence. I also want to recognise that the impacts of this are not felt equally. First Nations women and children continue to experience family violence at disproportionate rates, with devastating outcomes for individuals, families and communities.

This government has done more than any other government to protect women and children, prevent family violence and hold perpetrators to account. I have had the privilege of working in this space throughout my time in Parliament, including through my previous portfolio of prevention of family violence and through First Peoples, and now through my responsibilities in victim support, youth justice and corrections. But this government knows that there is always more work to be done. There is always more that we can do to keep victim-survivors safe, strengthen our justice system and prevent further harm.

Today this bill takes another important step forward. Firstly, the bill will abolish the use of good character as a concept in sentencing, including in its use as a mitigating factor for all offences. Put simply, if you commit a serious offence, you will no longer be able to rely on claims about your good character to reduce your sentence. Currently victim-survivors can be required to sit in court and hear that the person who harmed them is a person of good character. This can deepen their trauma and diminish their lived experience. Being considered respected or good by others does not make the harm inflicted on a victim any less serious or any less deserving of recognition. These reforms are about ensuring sentencing remains focused on relevant, objective information. The court will still be able to consider information that is relevant to sentencing, including matters that may properly inform an assessment of an offender’s prospects of rehabilitation. What will change, however, is the court will no longer receive or rely on vague or subjective assessments of an offender’s reputation as a person of good character. This is an important reform that puts the focus where it belongs: on the offending, its impact and the factors that are genuinely relevant to a fair and appropriate sentence.

Further, this bill will introduce a new protected attribute of subjection to family violence. This means it will be unlawful to discriminate against someone because they have experienced or are currently experiencing family violence. No victim-survivor should lose the opportunity for a promotion or be denied a rental because they needed to attend court, relocate for safety or access support. These reforms recognise an important reality: experiencing family violence should not create another barrier to a person’s safety, stability or ability to participate fully in their community.

The bill also contains a number of reforms to family violence and personal safety processes. Too often victim-survivors are required to attend court multiple times to seek or maintain protection from a perpetrator. This can force them to repeatedly relive their experiences of violence and subject them to further trauma. Victim-survivors should not have to fight so hard for protection and safety. These changes will deliver more victim-centred processes for extending or varying family violence intervention orders to better protect children and families from predatory behaviours through the personal safety intervention order service.

Coercive control is a deeply damaging form of family violence. It can involve intimidation, humiliation, surveillance, gaslighting and isolation. It is often used against a female intimate partner to undermine their autonomy, their confidence and their sense of self-worth. It can mean controlling who someone sees, where they go, what they wear, who they speak to or how they spend their own money. It is about taking away a person’s freedom little by little, so they have no control over their own life. We know the devastating impacts this can have on victim-survivors. Coercive control can increase the risk of homelessness, suicide, poor health outcomes and poverty. It can leave people isolated from their family and friends. Currently there is no specific criminal justice response available to victim-survivors experiencing coercive control unless there is a family violence intervention order in place or the behaviour escalates to another criminal offence, such as assault or a sexual offence. Victim-survivors deserve better than waiting for the harm to escalate before the justice system can respond. They deserve to be seen, they deserve to be heard and they deserve to know that when they reach out for help, our systems can respond in a way that keeps them safe and protects them from further harm. That is why we are criminalising coercive control as a standalone offence.

Considerable work has gone into developing this offence, and I want to acknowledge the many stakeholders who have contributed, raised difficult and complex issues, challenged us to get the detail right and worked constructively to ensure that the reform is effective. We will continue to work closely with stakeholders as we prepare for implementation, including ensuring family violence services, police, courts and the legal profession have the training, resources and support that they need to implement the offence effectively. The introduction of this offence will also help build greater awareness and understanding of the harm that is caused by coercive control. Our government stands firm that controlling, frightening and devastating the life of another person is not acceptable.

The bill also strengthens support for people experiencing vulnerability and disadvantage in relation to fines and infringements. These reforms will help ensure that fines do not compound the disadvantage experienced by people already facing significant barriers. The bill will also clarify that electronic signatures can be used for family violence intervention order and personal safety intervention order documents. The change will make proceedings less disruptive for victim-survivors by confirming that they can sign relevant documents electronically without having to attend a court or police station simply to provide a signature. This is a really practical and important improvement. The bill also strengthens protections for children and families by enabling PSIOs to be made against adults engaging in grooming behaviours. Grooming is a predatory behaviour undertaken to facilitate child sexual abuse. It is insidious, it is deeply harmful and it deserves to be recognised within the PSIO framework. These reforms will provide an opportunity to disrupt this behaviour before it escalates into sexual offending, helping to keep children and families safe.

We know that family violence destroys lives, harms children across generations and destabilises homes, communities and our broader society. Listening to and centring the experience and voices of victim-survivors is what this bill is about. I am proud to be part of a government that is committed to doing this work. We will continue to fight to keep people safe, to stop violence before it starts and to hold perpetrators to account. I commend the bill to the house.

 James NEWBURY (Brighton) (11:40): I rise to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Family Violence, Coercive Control, Good Character, Risk Assessment and Other Matters) Bill 2026. Victim-survivors deserve a more contemporary justice system and the coalition has, through the work of a number of our members, including the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Eildon, lived up to that commitment in our work in recent times and over our time in opposition. On coercive control, last December the member for Eildon sought to introduce in this place a private members bill that would have seen action taken almost one year ago, because we strongly believe that victim-survivors deserve a more contemporary justice system.

As the Attorney-General said in her second-reading speech, this bill enables reforms to prioritise victim-survivors’ safety and improve the efficiency of justice processes, and in some ways it does. But it does not go far enough to provide that contemporary justice system that we as a Parliament have an obligation to deliver. What this bill does, in summary, is it makes amendments in relation to family violence, intervention orders and criminal proceedings; enables information sharing; makes some changes in relation to electronic signatures; adds the new offence of coercive control; and makes amendments to the capacity of good character when it comes to sentencing. I do note that an amendment that does not get brought into effect for a full year – until August 2027 – provides that grooming constitutes prohibited behaviour. The bill also makes a number of fines reforms and prohibits discrimination on the basis of subjection to family violence. What this bill does not do is deliver a number of much-needed contemporary reforms and reforms this government has committed to delivering. This is a lost opportunity.

When it comes to the outstanding reforms, we need to think of them as a required set of changes that only bring about a contemporary system when they are all enacted. The measures in this bill are important and that is why the coalition supports them. As I said, in relation to coercive control, we moved a private members bill to do just that. When it comes to character references in terms of sentencing, of course we support the reform, but there are a number of other issues that we are seeing in our justice system at the moment which are causing significant damage to victim-survivors.

I refer specifically, firstly, to suppression orders. Suppression orders are causing serious damage in the way that they are, in my view, being misused. We are the suppression order capital of the country in Victoria, and it is a change that is needed. After months and months of calling for action, we have seen the government commit to reviewing the issue. We have as a coalition committed to end the abuse of suppression orders because we are angry with how they are being given out. There is no other word for it. As has been reported, it has been proposed that a change in that area should restrict orders to genuine physical safety reasons and severely limit the current mental health loophole. We have committed to fixing this loophole. A coalition government led by Jess Wilson will see reform of suppression orders, because we cannot see the continuation of suppression orders being issued in a way that is hurting and damaging people and being misused.

Further, as the member for Eildon rightly put it, a coalition government will see the introduction of Clare’s law in Victoria. For background, for the chamber, Clare’s law was introduced in the United Kingdom after the tragic murder of Clare Wood by a former partner. What the scheme allows is for individuals to request information from police about a partner’s history of violence – their right to ask ‍– and places an onus on police to proactively disclose information when they identify a risk – their right to know. This scheme is in place in South Australia and has seen 2581 applications and 1064 ‍disclosures since its inception at the end of 2024, a significant measure which shows that where there is a right to ask, there is a set of information to know, as it were. That is why we strongly support those laws being introduced in Victoria. Again, under a coalition, that will be introduced.

I would also note our commitment to prerecording sexual assault evidence. Victim-survivors deserve a more contemporary justice system, as I said earlier. That is why we have talked about and committed to the capacity for prerecorded sexual assault evidence. I note that after our commitment the government matched our commitment to introduce that reform and has not done so, which is causing distress in the sector. Reform is needed and should include letting victims in sexual offence proceedings be given the option of prerecorded evidence. Again, a coalition government will do that.

Other than suppression orders, a number of other matters were recently raised at a Melbourne University round table that are worth mentioning. Though it is not specifically in the act, there are issues with pseudonyms and concealment orders which deserve looking at because, as has been put by the courts before, they operate as de facto suppression orders. There has also been an argument put that is worth considering in relation to suppression orders, which is whether there should be an obligation to publicly publish reasons, which is not always the case, so that we can understand the reason for a suppression order.

Tangentially, I think it is worth considering current court documents and the processes around court documents. I note that in Queensland there is a legislative requirement in relation to court documents, and that is worth looking at. There are some outstanding issues in relation to the Family Violence Protection Act 2008 in relation to victim consent, for example, where an adult victim has an order against their partner, and whether or not there is a consent issue whereby the person who has the order placed against them may be protected by the law. Clearly it is a mistake at law, if you will, when there are some circumstances where they are protected in a way that perhaps they should not be.

I think it is finally worth also noting the Victims of Crime Commissioner’s recommendations at the end of September last year in relation to court safety. Court safety is of course a matter that should always be considered.

All of these issues that I have raised go to providing victim-survivors with a more contemporary justice system. They are important changes that could have been included in this bill and in some cases, as I said, have been committed to by the government but not delivered; I went through prerecorded sexual assault evidence as an example of that. These are commitments that we as a coalition have made in most of those cases. Victim-survivors deserve that contemporary justice system, and that is what they will have under a coalition government.

The ACTING SPEAKER (Daniela De Martino): I acknowledge former member for Wills Phil Cleary in the gallery today.

 Vicki WARD (Eltham – Minister for Public Transport, Minister for Creative Industries) (11:50): In speaking in support of this bill I start by acknowledging those who have survived family violence, those who have dared to rebuild their life, their self and their identity. You are worthy of so much respect. What you have been through should not be experienced by anyone. I acknowledge those who have not survived family violence, those whose lives have been stolen through the choice to use violence by someone close to them. And my acknowledgement includes Vicki Cleary, murdered on this day in 1987. I acknowledge the ongoing advocacy of her brother Phil and of all advocates who are relentless in wanting to see this violence end. I pay my respects to the woman who has been found dead in her home today, with a 75-year-old man arrested. The violence in homes continues, and it continues to affect mainly women and children who are experiencing and witnessing violence through predominantly the choices of men. It continues to disproportionately harm First Nations women and children, often at the hands and voices of non-Indigenous men.

Yesterday we heard from former AFL footballer Mitch Brown at Respect Victoria’s 16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence launch here in Parliament. He asked where the men were. The room was filled with women, with only a few men present. Mitch spoke of the responsibility of men in ensuring the safety of women. He said:

… all of us, not just violent men, not just men who control their partners … For too long, good men have been able to look at violence against women and see someone else’s problem. I know I have … I have seen things I knew were not right and stayed silent. I laughed at a joke … I have watched countless times other men disrespect women and decided it was not my place to say something. Not any more.

Mitch’s words were powerful. He recognised that the problem of family violence does not reside with women and children; it resides with men. ‘It is our problem,’ he said.

The fundamental problem comes down to not enough men respecting women and girls. This is evident when we see AFL male players – those who are admired by young people and children, those who are to set an example of healthy masculinity – behave in such unhealthy ways, whether it is the alleged behaviour at the Pullman by Swans players or the mocking of this behaviour by Richmond players. We see such hurtful and harmful disrespect of women and girls, and this behaviour is beyond hurting someone’s feelings; it is dangerous. It is physically and emotionally dangerous.

When you disrespect one woman, no matter who she is, you disrespect all of us, and that includes these players, the women who raised these men in their homes, the women who taught them at school, the women who cared for them in child care or as maternal and child health nurses, the women who are now likely their physios and therapists, the women they have needed throughout their lives and will continue to need. They show disrespect when they disrespect one woman, and it needs to stop.

This disrespect breeds harmful behaviours and choices, and that includes coercive control. The reform we are debating today builds on our government’s unparalleled commitment to keeping women and children safe. We have invested over $4 billion to build the nation-leading prevention and response infrastructure that does help keep people safe, and will continue to do so, and to change the cultural attitudes to violence in the home, because that is the core issue. We heard from Rosie Batty yesterday the confirmation that our state is leading the nation when it comes to investment, reform and improvements, and we know that as long as any woman or child – any person – in Victoria is unsafe at home, this work is not over.

This bill will take the important next steps in strengthening our laws against harmful behaviour. It builds on our previous reforms strengthening accountability for perpetrators, prioritising the safety of victim-survivors and improving the efficiency of our justice system. This bill will criminalise coercive control of an intimate partner, making coercive control a standalone offence, and it needs to be. This behaviour, this coercive control, is a pattern of abuse that is used to establish or maintain control over another person, often through intimidation, humiliation, gaslighting and isolation. The effect of repeated and prolonged coercive control is incredibly harmful. It removes a person’s sense of autonomy, and it diminishes their sense of self-worth. It erases people. We see the effects and consequences of this type of abuse around us regularly. Family violence is not something that happens to other people; it is present in every one of our communities, in every one of our workplaces, in every part of our social circles. The insidious nature of it means it is often broadly not seen; it is behind closed doors. Every day every person in this place will interact with somebody who has experienced or witnessed family violence; it is that pervasive. For those who experience coercive control, it is a relentless form of abuse that degrades their sense of safety, trust and wellbeing, not just within the bounds of an abusive relationship but also with the world around them. It shrinks them.

We know people who experience this form of abuse have an increased risk of homelessness and poverty, of becoming suicidal and even of committing offences themselves. Currently there is no criminal justice response available for victim-survivors of coercive control unless there is a family violence intervention order in place or a physical criminal offence has occurred, such as an assault or a sexual offence. By criminalising coercive control, this bill aims to bridge this gap, allowing perpetrators to be held accountable for their non-physical violence, such as psychological, emotional or financial abuse.

Another important change introduced into this bill is the abolition of the concept of good character as a mitigating factor in sentencing for offences. Too often our criminal justice system is a retraumatising experience where victim-survivors must sit in a court and hear that their perpetrator – the person who harmed them, the person who made that choice to cause harm – is a person of good character. This is an incredibly damaging practice that suggests good character and family violence are not mutually exclusive. We know that violence is a choice that perpetrators make, and it is the choices that we make that define our character. Abolishing the concept of good character requires the courts to focus purely on the offence committed by the perpetrator, what it did to the victim-survivor and how it affected them. It is time to end the ‘but he’s a good bloke’ narrative. If you are harming someone, you are not a good bloke, you are not a good woman, you are not a good person; you are a violent person, you are a person who has chosen to use violence. That does not make you good. No matter what else you have done in your life, you need to be held accountable for that moment where you made a choice to use violence. I am so glad that this practice will end with this bill.

These reforms also ensure that grooming behaviours are captured as offences under the personal safety intervention order framework. Grooming is a predatory behaviour undertaken to facilitate child sexual abuse. It can happen over time and may be directed at the child or parents or caregiver in order to get access to that child. A PSIO can be made to protect a person from unwanted prohibited behaviour such as assault, including sexual assault, as well as harassment and property damage. Under the bill, we are expanding the definition of ‘prohibited behaviour’ to include grooming to reflect its particularly dangerous, harmful and terrifying nature that profoundly affects children and their families. It is well and truly time that we recognise the harm of grooming behaviours and what they do to a child’s sense of the world. Often the effect of this behaviour does not end when the grooming ends but can affect their safety in relationships and the community well into adulthood. This behaviour stays with people; it becomes a part of a child’s story. This bill not only recognises the inherent harm of grooming but creates more mechanisms to stop this conduct before it escalates into sexual offending.

Another important aspect of the bill is the proposed amendment to the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 to add a new attribute of subjection to family violence. Family violence significantly affects the Victorian community, particularly women, First Nations women and women with disabilities, and currently there are no provisions in the act to recognise the effect that this has on other aspects of their lives. The time, energy and stress associated with experiencing family violence – requirements to attend legal proceedings, access support services or housing relocation – is a tax they should not have to pay. I support the bill.

 Emma KEALY (Lowan) (12:00): I rise today to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Family Violence, Coercive Control, Good Character, Risk Assessment and Other Matters) Bill 2026. I have been a member of this chamber for 12 years. Over my time I have seen the Royal Commission into Family Violence. I have seen the implementation of the final report and the recommendations that were arising from that royal commission. I have seen a lot of sunshine put on the impacts of family violence, on the necessity to do things better and do things more and on how serious this matter is. I have also over that time had many, many people come to me and disclose to me their experiences as victim-survivors of family violence, which are some of the more challenging experiences to engage with as a member of Parliament. I am sure that you share this sentiment, Acting Speaker, that when you put your hand up for parliamentary office you do not get a job description and you do not necessarily have a full depth of understanding of the issues that will be presented to you.

Those issues run deep in our communities, and I would like to acknowledge the victim-survivors in our communities, particularly in my electorate of Lowan but right across Victoria and even Australia. We know that things must change, yet they have not. We have had a royal commission and things are getting worse. We have had a lot of money spent on family violence, yet the outcomes are still getting worse. We have had opportunities within this Parliament to ensure that there were the relevant laws changed to support police to do their job as part of enforcing the law and stopping family violence, which has not yet occurred. In many ways I think it is a sigh of relief for all of us that a long time after the family violence royal commission handed down its report, we are seeing legislation that will finally outlaw coercive control in the state of Victoria.

This has been a long fight and there have been many people involved in that, and I commend all on both sides of the chamber and all within the community, the quiet victims, people who are courageous enough to share their experiences and their stories. For those within Victoria Police, who have added their voice to needing additional supporting laws so that they can do their job and do it well, and those particularly who work within the family violence sector, it is an incredibly difficult sector to work within. You are confronted with some of the worst of communication breakdown, of physical violence, of control, of one person having to be much bigger in a relationship and making the other person much smaller with many different tools, whether it is through psychological control, financial control or physical control elements. This is something that I have witnessed firsthand – not as a victim-survivor; I will make that clear. I do not understand what it is like to be in that position directly, but I do know the harm that it causes to so many people right across Victoria, particularly women.

I would like to acknowledge the Shadow Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence Cindy McLeish, who has done an outstanding job in ensuring that legislation like that before the house today was made a reality. I would also like to acknowledge the previous shadow ministers for family violence on our side of the chamber who have fought very, very hard for family violence, and I would like to acknowledge particularly Ms Crozier in the other place, who has been a fierce campaigner for better responses and better supports for victim-survivors of family violence. I would also like to acknowledge my colleague the member for Mildura Jade Benham. She has made many raw emotional contributions to this chamber that have helped put this law in place today. It is the courage of somebody like the member for Mildura to stand up in this place and share her direct experience of being a victim-survivor of family violence that helped others, who have not got a voice or have not got the ability to speak up, to be heard. I commend the member for Mildura. I am so proud of her in how she has been able to do that. It will be a difficult contribution, I am sure, that she will provide later today, but like all victim-survivors in Victoria, the Parliament of Victoria has her back.

I do not want to dwell on this, but I do want to say that it is somewhat disappointing that politics gets in the road of good legislation. It was in December last year that the Shadow Minister for the Prevention of Family Violence, the member for Eildon, and the member for Mildura put forward very similar legislation to what is before us today. It will take some 18 months to implement this legislation and to roll it out. It still grinds my gears that we have lost a year to be able to enforce laws around coercive control. There are many women who will have to suffer because of politics getting in the road of good legislation and good policymaking. That should not be the case. I think probably all members of this place sometimes have to say no to legislation simply because the government has not brought it forward. That should not be the case when it is an outcome that would result in women and other Victorians not being victims of family violence by providing police with the tools to be able to do their job, supporting our family violence workers to be able to do their job and redirecting someone who is using physical, psychological or financial violence and wants help to not do that anymore. They recognise it as a problem, and they cannot access support and assistance to stop that behaviour. We have let all of those Victorians down.

It is deeply disturbing to me that still we hear that Sunday is family violence day for many police officers around the state of Victoria. It is the day that they know that most of their workload will be knocking on doors around inquiries, following up complaints around physical violence, in particular in the home. That is not good enough in Victoria when we have had a Royal Commission into Family Violence. We need to make sure that we are providing the laws to police, and I am very pleased that we will be providing additional laws today. We also need to make sure that we are providing the appropriate resources, not just to support the victim-survivors after the case. We need to make sure it stops happening in the first place. That includes making sure that men understand how to communicate well and how to improve their behaviours and supporting them through that journey.

We know there are horrific crimes. Locally, I have spoken with Simone O’Brien, who has been a fierce campaigner against family violence. She has told her story so many times. She was beaten to near death with a baseball bat. It is utterly disgraceful what happened in that instance. That is horrific assault, and it is absolutely inexcusable. But there was a series of red flags that took place up to that moment that perhaps could have resulted in an intervention that would have stopped that assault from happening. The forgotten part of the journey of how we bring family violence to an end is how we pick up those red flags early – this is something I learned from Simone – by listening to someone who is a victim-survivor. If we pick up those red flags early, we can either end a relationship or we can redirect it into a way that people communicate and treat each other with much more equality within a relationship so that there is equal contribution and respect and no control within a relationship. I would encourage any politician to pursue that going forward, because it is a step that has been ignored and it is a step that would bring family violence closer to an end.

Again, I would like to congratulate all who have been involved in bringing this legislation forward. I have recently been involved in a stalking case, which has been incredibly difficult for me to deal with. I cannot imagine what that is like when it is a loved one who is stalking you. It is something that I think should be addressed. We need to make sure that this can be put to an end. It should not be a prolonged process where the victim is not appropriately protected. Most importantly, we need to be able to give the police the tools to do their job, because men who are treating women like objects or trying to control them, frighten them, intimidate them or make them fearful in how they go about their day-to-day lives should be locked up. They do not deserve to be out on the streets. We should be keeping other women safe from these men who are doing this disturbing behaviour so their behaviour can be sorted out. I commend the work of Victoria Police, all family violence workers and all of the victim-survivors who assisted to put this bill forward today.

 Tim RICHARDSON (Mordialloc – Minister for Local Government, Minister for Consumer Affairs, Minister for Renters) (12:10): It is important and critical in this chamber today to rise and speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Family Violence, Coercive Control, Good Character, Risk Assessment and Other Matters) Bill 2026. This is a bill I feel like I could speak for days on. This is a significant piece of work that has been done. But before I go into some of the elements, I want to acknowledge victim-survivors and those that have been lost to the traumas of family violence and intimate partner violence. While it is sometimes not in order to recognise the contributions of people, it would be beyond me not to recognise Phil Cleary’s presence in this house today and his advocacy for his sister Vicki over a number of years. When I became Parliamentary Secretary for Men’s Behaviour Changea little while ago, his was one of my first events, out at Coburg and bringing people together under the stewardship of Anthony Cianflone, the member for Pascoe Vale, who is an outstanding member of Parliament and advocate. We all have work to do, and every hour that ticks by is another hour when we can do everything we can to prevent violence and intimate partner violence in our community. That never rests; all those years on, it still goes on. I acknowledge the work of family members like Phil and so many others that have had that trauma and that impact, live with that and have every bit of resolve to make change into the future.

This is an incredibly important bill. Coercive control has a presence in so many elements, the overwhelming majority of elements, of gendered violence and intimate partner violence in our communities. We know we cannot law-and-order our way out of this crisis. We need, in particular, men and boys to be responsible for their actions and their behaviours, because if we are to stop gendered violence in Victoria, it starts with men and boys. Every single bit of the work and effort that we need to make is to create an environment where we call out bad behaviour, because we know those first elements of poor attitudes towards women and girls can bring the enabling environment for violence into the future. The evidence stacks up. The evidence is clear that that can have an impact across our society – we see consistently tens of thousands of people, particularly the overwhelming majority being men, that are known to Victoria Police to use violence against an intimate partner. Coercive control is a key feature of that. This is as much about an education campaign across the state ‍– and we have seen the feature of coercive control legislation in New South Wales – as about having a key conversation around the really unsafe impacts of coercive control, its presence in relationships and how it can lead to violence over time.

When I was Parliamentary Secretary for Men’s Behaviour Change, I had the opportunity to join the Attorney-General in some of these consultations, and I acknowledge the work that was done by the sector and the genuine concern from a range of different communities – I remember some of the discussions that were had at the time – about making sure this is right and making sure this legislation is fit for purpose. It builds on a huge legacy that this government has in more than $4 billion invested in the prevention of family violence to create an environment in which when victim-survivors seek out that support and care, we are there in that moment of need. The Orange Door network is nation leading across the 37 sites and the outreaches that they have. Hundreds of thousands of people have gone through those services. What really jars on me is that over 250,000 of those individuals have been kids.

When we see the pervasiveness and the impact, this being the number one law and order issue in our state, and the intergenerational trauma that flows from family violence and intimate partner violence, this is an epidemic. This is a crisis in our nation, and in every minute that ticks by we need to be focused on this in all of our systems and all of our engagement. It is a responsibility of all in the community to be front and centre, whether it is in workplaces, in sporting organisations, in government or in private sector work and across our communities. We need to make sure that in every form and facet the prevention of family violence and intimate partner violence is a core focus.

This bill does really good things and it builds on that work. Particularly we saw the Premier yesterday address the activism campaign, 16 days of activism that will go forward. We will see a sea of orange when we get together on 20 November and march the streets to end gendered violence. To have our Premier as an upstander and an ally and to see the work that we have done to get to this point is really important.

I want to give a big shout-out to the legends at Respect Victoria. They do an outstanding job. The CEO Helen Bolton is an incredible leader. Helen has had a decorated career in the prevention of sexual violence across our state. That organisation has set the tone for how we talk about gendered violence and intimate partner violence. Their campaigns are internationally leading. They have a depth of research and policy that we could only dream of. The Willing, Capable and Confident report around the corrosive nature of men’s violence and the Man Box work and the Adolescent Man Box that have been put together give us the evidentiary basis. It gives us all the tools and understanding. The amazing team at Jesuit Social Services – I want to acknowledge the longstanding work of Julie Edwards and Matt Tyler, who has departed that organisation now but they set up the foundation – and then the absolutely magnificent leader in Kate Fitz-Gibbon, who led Respect Victoria as the chair for a decade. They have set the foundation for us to take action, and they have set up the foundation for us to push in and do further.

I note the really sincere and important comments from the member for Lowan in her reflections, but the notion that we can law-and-order our way out of this – this starts with cultural change and attitude change. When we say the royal commission made a certain amount of recommendations and the opposition says that because we have not ended family violence yesterday that is a failure of the royal commission, I think it is a very delicate point in just how pervasive and impactful gendered violence is. The notion that recommendations on a page and a service sector stood up would end it that quickly goes against every bit of evidence that there is an intergenerational need for understanding around how men and boys are raised and how we make sure that those damaging stereotypes and attitudes are responded to over time. That is what changes outcomes.

We have got the foundations with the Respect Victoria work, with the policy intent, but it is not just a political point around where that sits. I call that out because I think this should be a multi-Parliament approach. We have had the rapid review with Micaela Cronin and the great work that has been done. This is not about colours and movements in politics. This is about the evidentiary basis and following that and following the lead, and this government has not wasted a moment. There were some that said this would be a lawyers picnic. Now we have multipartisan support for the work that is being done. In the work that I was able to do and in the briefings I have had with some of the federal representatives, they see Victoria as the jurisdiction that leads in this space.

One crazy idea – the notion that someone’s good character could lower a sentence for a crime that they may have committed, particularly sexual violence or intimate partner violence – I think has made everyone’s skin crawl. I am so glad that the Attorney-General has done outstanding work. I want to call out the advocacy of Harrison James in this space. We connected on Instagram a while ago. To see Harrison the other week was moving and inspiring. To see the press conference that was done was absolutely outstanding. This work has been really important to bring this through and to make sure that if you are a perpetrator, if you have been sentenced and you have impacted on someone with your crimes, and I particularly think of contemporary references in gendered violence or sexual violence, that is not a good character. That is someone who has absolutely degraded their character. It does not matter what things you have done before, you are a perpetrator of sexual violence and harm, and that is that. The letters that people might write have no relevance to the conduct that is put forward. This is a really important change and recommendation, and I am really happy to see that. I know the Attorney-General has not wasted a moment going forward with that.

We have a lot to be really grateful for in Victoria. We have a great organisation in Respect Victoria, we have great department engagement through Family Safety Victoria and people who tirelessly put their work forward. But I want to end on this point: it is the victim-survivors and those that are no longer with us who have been impacted by gendered violence that we have at the forefront of all of our messaging and minds into the future. Katie and Zaiba spoke so well yesterday as members of the Victim Survivors’ Advisory Council, of which the magnificent Rosie Batty was the inaugural chair. Katie and Zaiba are representatives on that Victim Survivors’ Advisory Council. I have had a chance to interact with that council, and I know how important they are and how fearless they are in their advocacy for change. They are some of the most incredible people to put their story forward, to share their understanding of policy, to drive a better outcome and to fearlessly hold government to account. The honesty in some of those chats and the urgency of reform is not about just the policy outcome; it is about saving lives. It is about keeping families safe, and it is about keeping kids safe. I commend the bill to the house. To the Attorney-General and to the department, thank you for all your work on this.

 Ellen SANDELL (Melbourne) (12:20): So far this year 47 women in Australia have been killed by a man known to them. That is more than one woman a week so far killed by a current or former intimate partner or a man known to them. Why isn’t this on the front page of every single paper every single day? If this was one man murdered in his home by a partner, would we treat this differently? Or have our media and our leaders become so numb and so accustomed to women being killed that it barely rates a mention anymore? The last fortnight has been shocking for women in this country. When a woman reported a sexual assault in a hotel room in East Melbourne where five Sydney Swans AFL players were present, how did the media report it? Headlines said it was a scandal or an incident. The CEO of the Swans said that he was disappointed the players found themselves in this situation. I am sorry, but they did not find themselves in this situation. No-one just trips over and accidentally sexually assaults someone. It is a choice. Perpetrators make a choice to assault someone, and we as a society can make a choice not to stand for it or excuse it anymore.

Now we have Tigers players as well – and I am a lifelong Tiger, so this pains me – making light of women’s experiences of sexual assault and treating women’s experiences of having their physical and sexual boundaries crossed as a joke. It is not a joke. One in five women will experience sexual assault in their lifetime. That is 20 per cent of women, and that is just the ones that are reported. Gendered abuse is far, far too commonplace, and it has become much too normalised. Gendered violence does not just mean assault. There is emotional abuse, financial abuse, stalking, online harassment and things like reproductive coercion, where people are pressured to either have children or have abortions against their will. Right now, all of these forms of abuse are becoming far too normalised, and it is time for a reckoning. Women across this country are being treated like their safety just does not matter, like they do not deserve to be safe, but everyone deserves to be safe. It is the first job of politicians and governments to do everything in their power to keep people in their state and in their country safe. Leaders in our society and our institutions are failing when they refuse to call alleged sexual assault what it is or when they dismiss jokes about it as just boys being boys, when they deny that there is a cultural problem with men and in particular in men’s sport and when they fail to commit the money and resources to address the scale of the problem.

The saddest thing is that I thought we had had this conversation before, but it seems to have dropped off the radar of the media, of institutions and even perhaps of governments. It needs to be put back on the radar, so I am pleased that we are having this conversation in Parliament today. But why, for example, has the ministry for men’s behaviour change been quietly dropped from this Labor government and renamed the ministry for men and boys?Doesn’t men’s behaviour change deserve some specific attention, given everything that we have seen in the last two weeks and after all the women who have been killed this year by men? This cannot just be women’s problem to solve. Men need to step up. It is about men’s behaviour change. As we have heard so many times in this place before from people like Rosie Batty, who spoke on the floor of this Parliament all those years ago, changing the culture starts with setting a standard that women should be respected everywhere, that respect should be normal behaviour and that disrespect needs to be called out at every opportunity, not swept under the rug, and it needs to be stamped out early. It includes how we treat women in the workplace and how we treat women in the public eye, when everybody is watching, and setting the culture. Honestly, I think there is a reason that we have never had an elected female Premier in this state, and I think that the way that women are treated in the public eye and in politics and the way men often let it happen or exacerbate it has a lot to do with it.

I have talked about my own experiences in this place. I note that the member for Essendon has left the chamber, but before he leaves this place for good with his retirement I want to take the opportunity to call him out specifically and some of his colleagues, because I think if we want to talk about culture change it needs to start here in our Parliament, in the highest decision-making body in our state. When I first entered Parliament in 2014 as a young woman – I was just 29 during that election campaign – when I first stepped into this place, honestly I could not believe how women were treated, including by fellow members of Parliament, and I think many women in this place would have had common experiences. Sly comments about their appearance, sexualised comments about their experience in the chamber – sure, I had those. Rape and violence threats on social media, on the internet – sure, I had those too. Women in politics seem to just get used to it, although we should not have to. I am sure that the male politicians in this place would say that they would never, ever see themselves doing those things to a woman.

But there is something that is a little bit more insidious and subtle that happens to women in this place, in the way that they are treated differently from men every day in this culture, that does not get called out enough. Things have changed. But in my time in Parliament, from day one, for the first few years almost every single time I got up to give a speech as an elected member of this place there were two members of Parliament in particular, the member for Essendon and the former member for Melton Don Nardella, who would come into this chamber specifically just to yell over the top of my speeches. Regardless of what the speech was about they would use their booming voices to yell throughout the entirety of it so that I could not be heard, attempting to silence me, and then they would get up and leave when I was finished.

A member interjected.

Ellen SANDELL: I note someone opposite said, ‘It’s just Parliament.’ But this was not just politics and Parliament. This was relentless. It was not just political theatre. It was a deliberate, targeted intimidation tactic. At the time, after a few years, when I got up and called it out, I had Labor women come up to me in the corridor and say, ‘Yes, this is not okay. This behaviour is not okay.’ But other people said I should just get used to it, that it was just because I was a Green, that it was just politics. But do you know what the interesting thing is? It never happened to my male colleagues, the ones who sat right next to me, who were also Greens, even though they gave very similar speeches. Their speeches were just as fiery, just as passionate, but somehow they were allowed to deliver their speeches free of the kind of behaviour that I experienced for years. The member for Richmond, though, my female colleague, was treated similarly to me when she entered this place.

The sad thing is I actually do not think these two MPs or perhaps other male MPs in this place ever actually realised what they were doing, because treating women like this had become so commonplace and normalised. I think they would not think it was gendered at all. But I hope that in their retirement they take some time to reflect on whether their behaviour really was okay, whether it really was just politics or whether it was something that contributes to a culture that keeps women out of public life. I hope that they will reflect on whether having two older men with booming voices yell at the top of their lungs over the top of a woman in this place really was appropriate behaviour in the workplace and what they really were trying to achieve deep down and perhaps how that kind of threatening and intimidating behaviour might hit differently for young women witnessing that, given everything that women grow up experiencing in society. We know that gendered violence does not start out of nowhere. We have had this conversation before. It starts with a culture of disrespect, of intimidation, of putting women down. It starts with violent language. It starts with coercive behaviour, like we are talking about in this bill today.

But despite all the horrific statistics that we have heard in this place today, I do have hope, because I have been so heartened in the last few days at the outpouring from people speaking up and calling out leaders who are not taking gendered violence seriously. We had #MeToo, where women felt emboldened to get up and talk about their experiences, and it felt like we were having a reckoning. In the last few years it feels like that has really fallen away, that women’s experiences are not being talked about, are not being legitimised. But it feels like, in the last few weeks, we are starting to finally have this conversation again.

I think people in the community know the difference between right and wrong, and they can see the crisis for what it is, an emergency that needs an emergency-scale response. New laws might be part of this; I do not think that they are the only answer. This bill today includes some important reforms that stakeholders have been asking for for a very, very long time. I would like to acknowledge all those stakeholders and acknowledge the minister who has brought these changes forward today. It is absolutely right that experiencing family violence will be a protected attribute under the Equal Opportunity Act 2010. No-one should lose a job or be denied a promotion or face discrimination in housing because they are experiencing family violence or have taken steps to protect themselves. Of course they should not.

The changes to fines are also welcome and long overdue. We know financial abuse is a common form of family violence, and perpetrators can weaponise fines, debts and financial systems to keep victim-survivors trapped. This is something that we have brought up in this place many times before, particularly with things like CityLink and toll roads, where often a perpetrator will keep the tag that is actually registered to a female partner. The female partner has left, but they still keep racking up the fines and they keep going to the female partner. I think we need not just these changes but real fines reform overall. I think we need concessional fines, and we also need reform that means that the big private companies like Transurban, the toll road companies, do not get the government to be essentially their free debt collector and put people into huge amounts of debt that they could actually end up in prison for. Expanding access to the family violence scheme and other forms of fines relief is a practical reform that will really make a difference.

There are also some sensible changes to family violence intervention orders, reducing the need for victim-survivors to repeatedly return to court, requiring courts to consider their views and safety when extending orders and making sure the system better recognises patterns of risk. My colleague in the other place Kat Copsey has some questions she is putting forward to the minister’s office about the process flow of criminal courts, just to make sure there will be no unintended consequences. But I will leave those questions to her.

This bill also raises a much bigger question about how this government is responding to family violence. Family violence is not inevitable; it is preventable. The real test of a government’s commitment is not just the number of new offences it can announce; it is what happens to a woman or child when they put their hand up and ask for help. Can they get through to a service? Can they get a lawyer at a community legal centre? Can a young person who has grown up around violence get specialist support before the patterns are repeated? Right now, too often the answer to those questions is no. Victoria recorded more than 106,000 family violence incidents in the year 2024–25, and that is an all-time high. Specialist services tell us that demand is significantly outpacing supply. Maybe we will never be able to keep up with the level of demand until we have that real culture change that brings down the incidence of family violence. But we can do a lot better.

This year Labor allocated just 2.9 per cent of the family violence budget to primary prevention, and that is down from the year before. The current waitlist for people fleeing family violence to access housing, for example, is 18.6 months. That is an increase of 1.3 months from the year prior. The problem is getting worse, and there is more investment needed. I do not think anyone in this place wants governments to just keep legislating after violence has occurred. We actually want to fund the services to prevent violence before it happens.

I also want to acknowledge that specialist organisations do have some concerns about the new standalone offence of coercive control in this bill. Coercive control is real, and it can be devastating. As we know, it is not just one incident but a pattern of isolation, surveillance, financial control, threats, humiliation and the gradual stripping away of a person’s autonomy and dignity. We need our systems to recognise it and respond to it, but organisations including the Women’s Legal Service Victoria, the Federation of Community Legal Centres, Safe and Equal and the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service have warned about the risks of relying on a new criminal offence which alone will not solve the issue and might hurt some of the most vulnerable women who themselves are experiencing family violence.

These organisations are particularly concerned about misidentification, and we know that this happens where victim-survivors are wrongly identified as perpetrators. Often it is perpetrators who use the justice system itself as another form of control to deliberately have the victim misidentified as a perpetrator and then use these types of offences to further the abuse that they are being subjected to. The risks are real. This does unfortunately happen, and the risks are especially acute for Aboriginal women and others who already experience discrimination within the legal system at high rates. We do not want to brush these warnings aside. If the new offence is to operate safely, implementation matters enormously. Specialist training for police, lawyers and courts and strong safeguards against misidentification will be very important. Culturally safe services, early intervention, properly funded legal assistance and independent monitoring of what the law does in practice will be really important.

We know a law cannot implement itself, and family violence policy should not become a contest of who can create the toughest-sounding offence. That might get a headline, but it does not solve the problem. Ten years after Victoria’s Royal Commission into Family Violence, we know far more about what works. We know crisis response matters. We know that safe housing matters. We know legal assistance matters. We know children need to be treated as victim-survivors in their own right, and that matters. We know we must tackle the harm caused by industries like alcohol and gambling as well, which fuel violence. We know prevention and respectful relationships education matter, and we know that specialist services need stable, long-term funding rather than having to constantly wonder whether their programs will survive the next budget. There are reforms in this bill that will make the system fairer and safer, and they should be acknowledged. But legislation is only one part of the job. I hope the government, as they say they are serious about family violence, will match these new laws with investment in the people and programs doing the work every day. I know they have made significant investments to date, and the job is not done.

Ultimately the measure of success is not how many new laws we pass in this chamber. The measure of success is whether fewer women and children experience violence in the first place and whether every person who reaches out for help can actually get it. The measure of success will be seen next year when we are in this place: will we be able to bring that number – 47 women killed so far this year ‍– down to the number it should be, which is zero?

 Anthony CIANFLONE (Pascoe Vale) (12:38): I rise to support the Justice Legislation Amendment (Family Violence, Coercive Control, Good Character, Risk Assessment and Other Matters) Bill 2026. I do so as the Parliamentary Secretary for Community Safety and the state member for Pascoe Vale, Coburg and Brunswick West but also, importantly, as the father of two young daughters, who I want to grow up, like all young women, in a world that is free from men’s violence against women and children. In doing so I acknowledge and thank the Attorney-General and Minister for Prevention of Family Violence, Minister Kilkenny, and nearly all the other justice ministers for bringing this bill to the chamber. I also thank the thousands of stakeholders, organisations, advocates, justice community representatives, victims and survivors who fought for years to arrive here today, including via the incredible work of the landmark Royal Commission into Family Violence, which continues to provide us with a pathway to a better future.

But most importantly I would like to acknowledge all of the women and children whose lives have been taken by family violence – namely, men’s violence against women and children. Across Victoria and indeed Australia family violence and men’s violence against women is the number one law and order issue that is destroying lives, harming children across generations and destabilising homes, communities and our broader society. The evidence and research are very clear: on average, one Australian woman every week is killed by a current or former intimate partner. The Victorian family violence framework notes that overwhelmingly the perpetrator in these cases is male.

Around one in four Australian women have experienced violence from an intimate partner. Around one in four Australian women have experienced physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner since the age of 15, and one in five women have experienced sexual violence. Women are five times more likely than men to require medical attention or hospitalisation because of intimate partner violence and five times more likely to report fearing losing their lives. Indeed the Victorian government describes intimate partner violence as causing more illness, disability and death than any other risk factor for women aged 25 to 44 years of age. In 2024–25 Victoria Police recorded 106,429 ‍family violence incidents, more than 290 incidents every single day. It is around one police call-out every 10 minutes. Victoria Police’s Safe from Harm strategy shows just how gendered this violence is: women and girls accounted for 74 per cent of victim-survivors recorded in family violence incidents, while in 62 per cent of family violence incidents the perpetrator was the victim-survivor’s current or former partner.

We must do better. Males, men, boys must all do better. Husbands, dads, brothers must all do better, because behind every statistic is a woman or a young girl, a mother, a daughter, a sister, a colleague, a neighbour, a friend, a human being who should have had the right, like all of us, to live the life they choose, marry whom they choose, partner with whom they choose and even not to partner or de-partner and leave whom they choose when they choose, on their own terms, without fear of violence, threats, coercion or repercussions. Sadly, we know far too many women have continued to have this fundamental right ignored, disrespected and taken away from them at the hands of violent, misogynistic men. I would like to quote Kym Valentine, who is an advocate for my community on these important issues. She says:

To end coercive control is to dismantle the invisible prison that strips away a person’s autonomy, restoring the fundamental human right to live, think, and breathe without the shadow of another’s will dictating the terms of their existence.

One of these women who experienced the tragic consequences of coercive control, from my community, was Vicki Cleary, and I thank and acknowledge her brother Phil Cleary and sister Lizzie for being here today and for the letter they sent to me to share with the chamber about Vicki’s story and their family’s story:

Dear Anthony,

On this day, 26 August 1987 –

almost 40 years ago to this day –

our sister, 25-year-old Vicki Cleary, was stabbed to death by her ex-boyfriend outside her place of work, the Shirley Robertson Childcare Centre in Coburg.

Vicki’s killer was a violent man, who’d previously stormed into the childcare centre on several occasions and frightened her and members of staff.

He was the epitome of a coercive and controlling man, whereas Vicki was a kind, talented, artistic and beloved woman.

Parents at the kindergarten marvelled at Vicki’s kindness and the way she cared for their children.

Vicki was Lorna and Ron Cleary’s firstborn daughter after 4 sons, one of whom died 24 hours after birth. Her birth on 9 October 1961 was treated like a miracle in our home.

On Vicki Cleary Day at the Coburg Footy Ground this year I –

Phil –

told the story about Vicki blowing out the candles on the celebratory cake with me after my 200^th VFA game in June 1987, 11 weeks before we lost her.

So too have I told the story of her jumping off the tram after seeing me crossing Sydney Road on the way to the last training night of the 1987 VFA season, six days before her murder.

Having escaped a coercive man, she was bursting with happiness.

Unfortunately, like so many women at that time, she chose to stay silent about her ex-boyfriend’s threatening visits and calls to the kinder and threats to do her harm.

Forty years ago, no one was talking about the terror women were enduring at the hands of men driven by male self-entitlement and misogyny and what governments could do to stop these –

evil –

men.

Today, more and more women are prepared to challenge men’s coercion and control.

Today, every thinking person knows that male entitlement, misogyny and the refusal of an underbelly of men to accept women’s newfound rights is the reason we are losing somewhere in the order of 80 women a year to men known to them.

Today, every thinking person knows that overwhelmingly, when a woman dies at the hands of a man known to her, the murder occurs in the context of separation and is a brutal expression of power by the killer.

After nearly 40 years of campaigning to stop men like –

their sister’s killer, Phil –

… will support any law that stops men –

like their sister’s killer –

… and enshrines a woman’s right to independence and agency in the world.

We need to tell those misogynistic, coercive men who act as if a woman is their chattel that the law will no longer turn a blind eye to them.

From Vicki Cleary in Coburg in 1987 to Julie Ramage in Balwyn in 2003, to Adriana Donato in Aberfeldie in 2012, to Fiona Warzywoda in Sunshine in 2014 and Hannah Clarke and her children in Brisbane in 2020, we’ve lost woman after woman to an ex-partner in circumstances where every Red Flag was flying.

There just isn’t time in one speech in parliament to name all the women and all the cases where a woman has died in circumstances where every Red Flag is flying.

It’s time for legislation that not only recognises the Red Flags but stops these coercive men in their tracks.

On the annual Vicki Cleary Day at the Coburg Football Ground we remember Vicki and all the women lost to violent men and we stand in solidarity with the campaign to end male coercion and control.

Phil is here today with his sister Lizzie:

… who was 14 years of age when she lost her big sister Vicki in 1987 and spoke so powerfully about Vicki and the campaign last year.

Ask Lizzie about the impact of Vicki’s murder on her physical and mental wellbeing and you’ll quickly grasp the depth and impact of that trauma.

Mum and Dad aren’t here to tell us about their trauma.

Phil writes:

After our mother Lorna died in 2011, Lizzie found several of Mum’s diaries and a letter she’d written in memory of Vicki. The letter, which began with the sentence, ‘My Darling Vicki I think of you often, always with tears in my eyes and wonder why it had to be,’ and ended with the words, ‘You dear Vicki, were always a beautiful child, a young girl with such a beautiful and compassionate nature. You did not deserve to die in the way you did, Mummy,’ is simply heartbreaking.

The heartbreak Mum wrote about was only magnified by the decision of the trial judge, George Hampel, to grant Vicki’s killer a provocation defence and send him to gaol for 3 years and eleven months after he was found guilty of manslaughter not murder.

It’s a testament to Vicki’s character however, and that of her parents, that she has become synonymous with the anti-violence campaign in Australia and the ending of misogynistic provocation defence in Victoria in 2005.

Vicki’s name and her memory lives on in the hearts and minds of campaigners. She is our inspiration.

Today, Lizzie and I want to pass on our thanks to –

the Victorian Parliament –

… for remembering our sister Vicki today in our presence …

and on the day of the anniversary of her life being taken on 26 August 1987, nearly 40 years ago. There are moments in public life when history seems to arrange itself in ways that are difficult to explain. Today is one of those days. Sometimes dates are more than dates. Sometimes history has a way of bringing us back to where the story began, not to reopen old wounds but to remind us of why the work must continue. Phil wrote:

We genuinely hope that the proposed legislation is a watershed in the campaign and is a step towards ending the heartbreak that we and so many families have, and continue to endure.

I thank and commend Phil and Lizzie for being here and for Phil’s staunch and ongoing advocacy over many years to call out, stamp out and prevent men’s violence from taking the lives of more women, girls and children.

That is why this bill is so important. It contains a number of landmark and significant reforms to prioritise victim-survivor safety, improve the efficiency of our justice process and ensure perpetrators of all forms of interpersonal violence can be held to account, including with respect to coercive control, good character references, risk assessments and other family violence and prevention matters. As we have heard, coercive control is an insidious form of abuse, usually by a man, to intimidate, humiliate, surveil, gaslight and isolate another person, usually a female intimate partner, and strip them of their sense of autonomy and self-worth so as to have control over them. We are getting rid of the ‘good character’ concept as well. There are Equal Opportunity Act 2010 reforms, family violence and personal safety reforms, reforms around grooming, multi-agency risk assessment management reforms and numerous other reforms. I commend this bill in honour of Vicki Cleary and her family.

 Jade BENHAM (Mildura) (12:48): Gee, this has been a long time coming, but what a day. I thought I was going to be fine, but my voice is already shaking. I am incredibly grateful to not only have language around things like coercive control, gaslighting, like the member for Pascoe Vale just highlighted, and all the words and language that we have for this kind of insidious behaviour now, but also to now have laws around them. I thought I was going to be so good today. I have heard about it in this place so many times. I know I lose it about this stuff all the time, but it has obviously been a trauma for a long time. Things trigger me and bring it up, and obviously days like this do too. I have heard in this place sometimes, probably when I should not, ‘always the victim’. I say in response to that, I hate the term victim-survivor. I am not a victim; I am a victor. Today I feel like a victor.

In her first act as Leader of the Opposition, Jess Wilson promised that she would introduce coercive control in a standalone bill, which we tried to do. That was a momentous occasion for me. I have been advocating for this for a long, long time – since before we had language for it. But today, to see this piece of legislation presented to the house is like – gosh, I want to say it is a win, but for so many women who have lost their lives waiting for this it has been an evolution, and we are not done yet. There is more work to do in this space. We know that. It feels like a win, but it is such an important step forward, and I just hope everyone in this place and the entire community of Victoria understands the gravity of this piece of legislation and that there are now laws around not only coercive control but good character and the good character risk assessment. The fact is that not only in a court of law, when you have people coming in backing your perpetrator, saying how good a bloke they are, but also when you have people – and I am going to touch on this a little bit more because I do want to give the AFL a whack in a second – welcoming your perpetrator back into footy clubs after they have been convicted, it is triggering and traumatic not just for the victim who is still at that club but for every other woman who has not been game enough to speak out. For them to see someone who has been convicted of a domestic violence crime welcomed back into a club with open arms – in Kim O’Reilly’s case her perpetrator was released on day release and welcomed back into the club. How is that right?

We understand that in small communities – and I have raised this with members of the AFL Commission from time to time – it is hard for individuals within small clubs like that to make a call given that those perpetrators may very well have kids that go to school with the kids of members of those committees as well. Small communities, right? They are fearful that those kids will then cop backlash from any decisions that are made to refuse registration or refuse entry to the club at all. The ramifications can be, in some cases, quite scary. The AFL are the martyrs of all things virtuous, and they spend a hell of a lot of money – which could go into state tax coffers, but that is another matter – virtue-signalling on every cause that comes along. But when it comes to the crunch, particularly in domestic violence, they need to take the decision out of the hands of the judges, particularly with regional and local sport. For every community sport, for everything that falls under the AFL banner, the AFL need to make it their policy that if footballers are convicted of a domestic violence crime they then write themselves off – that they cannot be registered with an AFL club again, and that means AFL Victoria, AFL Victoria Country, wherever. This is something they could do. It would not cost them a penny, but if they are going to stand for something, they should stand for this. It makes sense.

Again, the gravity of that little policy would carry so much weight, particularly in small communities where survivors of domestic violence would not have to worry about seeing the face of a known and convicted perpetrator running around on Thursday night, or within the clubroom having dinner, like everything’s wonderful. There is the gravity of that for survivors, for people that are going through cases at the moment – several friends of mine this year in fact, with our local netball club, have come to me and said, ‘What can we do about this?’ I have taken up that baton, and I am like, ‘You know what, we’ve brainstormed it, and this is the solution: take the decision out of the hands of the judges,’ like we have done today. This good character reference – how can you be of good character when you are being accused of the crimes that you are being accused of? It is ridiculous. The AFL need to take note of this legislation that is before the house today. They actually need to stand for something, because at the moment they stand for not much, and women are angry. I am not going to comment on any other case at all with regard to the AFL, but they need to do something. They really do.

I welcome this bill today, I really do, but there is much more work to be done, and it is not just the legislators in here. I am grateful that this is now law, I really am. It feels like a win. Like I said, I am not a victim, I am a victor, and I feel like a victor today. The fact that we introduced this in December of last year and we have been able to debate it today and feel like this is our win in opposition is monumental. I am grateful for this; it is a big one. I do not care about credit. I care about the woman who is sitting at home at the moment who does not yet realise that that gaslighting and that control and that manipulation and that financial control are coercive control. This is the start, and there are actions she can now take. There are supports and there are consequences. There will be consequences for this. We have never had that before, and it has been, like I said, a long time coming.

It is not just women. Over the course of this advocacy project I have spoken to men who are reluctant to come out – it is usually after a relationship has ended – but they have said to me: ‘Oh my gosh, this is exactly what happened to me.’ So it happens. Obviously women are the victims of this more than men. I was not surprised, but I have heard some pretty confronting stories from men and intimate partners – other men as well. There have been some really harrowing stories that I have witnessed in my time advocating for this. I am so proud. I truly believe everything happens for a reason, and today is a win. There is no other way I can put it. It feels like a win. It has felt like a battle, but today I am incredibly proud to stand here and commend this bill to the house.

 Chris COUZENS (Geelong) (12:59): I am pleased to rise to contribute to the Justice Legislation Amendment (Family Violence, Coercive Control, Good Character, Risk Assessment and Other Matters) Bill 2026, and can I acknowledge the member for Mildura’s contribution. I know how difficult it is for many women, but for you in the chamber today, I acknowledge that. Women and children are dying. That is a fact, and the need to do something about it grows every day. I think this legislation is of great significance, as we have heard from all of our speakers so far. I do want to acknowledge the work of the Attorney-General and previous ministers for prevention of family violence and the work that they have done. But importantly, to all of those family violence workers out there that deal with this every single day, to victim-survivors who deal with it every single day –

The ACTING SPEAKER (Iwan Walters): Apologies to the member for Geelong, but I am going to interrupt debate there. You will have the call when the house resumes.

Sitting suspended 1:00 pm until 2:02 pm.

Business interrupted under standing orders.