Thursday, 5 February 2026

 Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (10:11): I rise today to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Family Violence, Stalking and Other Matters) Bill 2025. The opposition will not be opposing this legislation, because any improvement will help victims and any improvements are welcome, but I cannot let this moment pass without confronting a profound failure of this government’s leadership. This bill is a very partial and selective response that only responds to two of the 45 recommendations of the Victorian Law Reform Commission’s (VLRC) report on its inquiry into stalking, yet it is still being presented to the community as a serious response to family violence and stalking in Victoria. It implements only recommendations 26 and 33, which allow interim personal safety orders to be made on the court’s own motion and clarify the stalking offence to include a list of different actions or ongoing behaviours, reflecting the broad nature of stalking. This is extremely disheartening because it feels like another disingenuous game of tokenistic politics, which so often diminishes and trivialises the experiences of real victims, including thousands of stalking victims across Victoria.

It has taken years for the government to get to this point. I realise that the government will seek to take cheap shots at the opposition for not being more fulsome in our praise for this bill, but the truth is that it does not deliver what the government promised victims, their families, the public and this Parliament. I would have been so thrilled to see this bill deliver the things that it needed to do in order to help women that I and so many of my colleagues and thousands and thousands of Victorians have been desperately pleading for. Sadly, that did not happen here. I say to the government: if you do not want to listen to me, maybe you will listen to Aggie Di Mauro, the mother of Celeste Manno, who has been in the fight for these changes ever since her daughter was brutally murdered in 2020. As Aggie wrote in her email to me last week:

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

Having reviewed the bill alongside the VLRC’s final report, I feel compelled to state this plainly. While some limited procedural matters have been addressed, the government has failed to implement the core substantive recommendations the commission identified as necessary to protect stalking victims and prevent escalation to serious violence or homicide. Most distressing of all, Celeste’s name does not appear anywhere in the bill or its accompanying material, despite her murder being the catalyst for this inquiry and despite the VLRC chair expressly acknowledging that in the report’s preface.

What Aggie has written is exactly why so many Victorians feel let down while this government is patting itself on the back. As I have said a number of times now, one of the most fundamental roles of government is to ensure the safety of its citizens. Why else do we need government? All other freedoms are completely useless if we do not get this one right.

This government makes sweeping statements and claims of being committed to ending gendered violence, but tragically for so many women the hard evidence and lived experience tells a completely different story.

So why are we here today debating this piece of legislation? Just over five years ago Celeste Manno was brutally murdered. The chilling details of this case absolutely shook the state, but time tends to lessen the impact of that initial shock as news cycles relentlessly move us towards the next big story. So in memory of Celeste Manno, I am going to retell some of her story – not for its shock value but because we need to remember some of the gruesome realities of that murder that so violently and senselessly stole the life of a beautiful, loved daughter, sister and friend in an act that was in part because the justice system failed her.

What happened to Celeste formed the basis of the VLRC stalking report. Would she still be alive today if her pleas were heard? That we will never know. But what we do know is that this does not excuse the failures of the government. I want to remind this chamber that the cost of this VLRC report was in fact this woman’s life, and that life deserved more than implementing two of 45 recommendations, in the process completely omitting her name.

Celeste was an adored 23-year-old daughter of Aggie and Tony. She was the beloved sister of Alessandro. She had a huge group of friends. She had finished her bachelor’s degree in psychology and criminology. She had big dreams, a zest for life and an exciting future. She had a good job and was enrolling to start her honours degree. She was bursting with life and joy, and she was the energy and life of the party. One day at her job at the call centre, she was asked to walk a guy who had just got fired to the door to see him out. She felt bad for him, she showed compassion and she wished him well, and that was it. That short exchange was all it took for him to become completely obsessed with her and to start stalking her.

The stalking became so relentless, including online. She asked him to stop – continually she asked him to stop. She would block him, but he would create other accounts and find other ways to contact her, and the cycle would start again. Over 18 months these messages became increasingly vulgar and degrading. Celeste took out an intervention order, which this man broke. He ended up being arrested for breaching it. On the way home from the police station after that saga, he bought a knife. After that he went quiet for about three months. Aggie and Celeste thought that getting this intervention order and the arrest had worked. What they did not know was that he continued to stalk her to the point where he knew where she lived, the whole layout of her house, and sickeningly, this included her bedroom.

One day Celeste posted a photo of herself and her new boyfriend online. Two days later she was brutally murdered by this monster. I am not saying his name, because I know that her family today are watching online, and they hate hearing his name. Her stalker broke into her bedroom window with a hammer, and he stabbed her 23 times as she slept. The cause of death of Celeste Manno was a stab to the heart. He was arrested shortly after and later convicted, with the case sparking renewed debate about stalking laws and women’s safety in the state of Victoria.

Following this horrific crime, then Premier Daniel Andrews announced the government had committed to reviewing the stalking laws and promised to honour Celeste’s memory by doing exactly what it took to make these changes. These changes were all going to be in memory of Celeste Manno. But five years after the government asked the Victorian Law Reform Commission to look at what could be done to make women in our community safer, this government has delivered a bill that would implement only two of the 45 recommendations from the commission’s own stalking report.

I have personally raised the issue of implementing the VLRC’s stalking report recommendations a dozen times in this Parliament, and I have been absolutely appalled by the government’s response. The reason I am appalled is that, like with so many other matters, this is a government that seems to be more interested in PR outcomes than delivering real help for Victorians when they need it. When the former Attorney-General (AG) was asked why the government would not provide a written response to the VLRC’s report, she said formal response was not necessary. She said:

I prefer to actually produce actions as a response …

Well, Treasurer, here we are, and the actions are sadly lacking. The truth is that this government is more interested in political optics like having photos taken while marching in rallies than delivering real reforms that are needed. This is a feeble and pitiful substitute compared to what is actually needed, and that is: doing something.

I want to briefly touch on the reforms and why they are so significant. Following Celeste’s death, the Victorian Law Reform Commission in April 2022 released a comprehensive report into stalking law reform with 45 expert-endorsed recommendations – recommendations informed by broad consultation that saw 115 submissions and 254 online responses. They were designed to modernise our laws, improve police response, strengthen victim protections and create pathways for support. But despite Daniel Andrews and the former AG Jill Hennessy promising to make the necessary changes, for over two years this government did absolutely nothing. I wrote about this last year, and I said:

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

Yet almost two years since the commission’s final report was tabled, nothing has happened. Despite candlelight vigils, rallies, media exposure and repeated pressure in Parliament, not one recommendation has been adopted.

Why am I pressing this point? Because it was the death of Celeste that the VLRC acknowledges drove this inquiry. Here is what the report says:

A special acknowledgement should be reserved for Aggie Di Mauro.

She is Celeste’s mum.

In the depth of her despair from the death of her daughter Celeste Manno under terrible circumstances, she successfully pressed the Attorney-General to investigate the law relating to stalking to save others the grief which she has suffered. … Her relentless pursuit of justice has been an inspiration. She often said that nothing would bring Celeste back, but this report will be a fitting legacy of her lovely daughter.

As Aggie wrote:

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

In 2022 I was told by this government, the Labor government, Celeste would be so proud of the legacy she left behind and all 45 recommendations would be implemented in her name. That has not occurred.

Celeste’s death is not the first time a woman’s death has prompted government action on violence against women. Following the horrific murders of Jill Meagher in 2022, Masa Vukotic in 2025 and Eurydice Dixon in 2018, various changes were made. Yet despite the VLRC’s stalking report acknowledging it is absolutely indebted to Celeste Manno’s mother, she goes completely unnoticed by this government. As Aggie wrote to me, most critically Celeste Manno was not even mentioned anywhere in this bill, despite her murder being the catalyst for this inquiry. What is horrifying is not just that Celeste and Aggie have been left out of this bill, I could not help but notice this absence in all the government’s carefully curated messaging. Both the current AG’s and Lizzie Blandthorn’s second-reading speeches mention the VLRC report, but there is no mention of the death of Celeste and the tireless work of her mother Aggie.

When you consider the state of crime in Victoria it is truly baffling why the government does not want to fully commit to facing the problems head-on. It is not like we need more consultation. Right here in front of me are hundreds of pages of it, thousands of pages right here, and countless consultations have been going on for an extremely long time.

In April last year I met with Sexual Assault Services Victoria, who prepared a briefing for our interview. For the sake of time, I am going to paraphrase, but Victoria is still without a strategy to prevent and respond to sexual violence despite the government first announcing its development in 2020 and promising delivery by 2022. While consultations began late in 2021, they were brief, with officials explaining the aim was to finish the strategy quickly to inform the budget, yet years later the strategy remains undelivered. Given the time that has passed and the limited nature of earlier consultations, fresh engagement is essential to ensure the strategy reflects current realities and delivers meaningful change. The more we fiddle around the fringes of true reform, the more the scale of the problem becomes more and more urgent.

Stalking offences right now are at the highest level they have been in more than a decade. Non-family-violence stalking cases rose 9.4 per cent in the year to June 2025. There were 1171 cases. Family violence related stalking cases rose 6.9 per cent. This is a massive issue. In 2023 alone Victoria Police responded to 94,170 family violence incidents. That is one every 6 minutes. Nearly three-quarters of those victims were women and girls. This is hardly a minor issue, and the government’s response to stall and then to deliver the bare minimum is quite insulting. I think the fact that this is an election year – the public can join the dots there.

What makes this even more troubling is that even as we pass this legislation the government is cutting or delaying critical funding in very important areas. Referring back to the Sexual Assault Services Victoria briefing, and again I will paraphrase, they said that despite countless meetings and promises the sector faces crippling uncertainty. Services often wait until halfway through the year to learn if their funding is renewed, yet they are expected to meet annual targets. The sector has sought answers, but none have come. This simple step would allow services to plan, retain staff and provide continuity of care. Anything less leaves victims waiting and systems failing. Without an appropriate and timely service to back these bill changes, the reality is that this is very similar to trying to fight crime with one hand tied behind your back.

One of the most critical areas of reform in the VLRC recommendations would have been an absolute game changer. It would have meant changes to cyberstalking and modern surveillance. Here is what the VLRC says in an opening paragraph:

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

The report recommends that victims should have easier access to financial and practical support, such as technology to prevent cyberstalking.

Better police training, risk assessment protocols and information-sharing mechanisms between agencies are necessary. Unfortunately my office has been contacted just this week by a woman whose story bears a frightening similarity to what happened to Celeste, and the police and courts have either been unable or unwilling to assist despite personal safety intervention orders existing. Examples like this are why we need the full set of recommendations to be implemented. Aggie said to me that the screening assessment for stalking and harassment, the SASH, which was publicly cited by the government and by Victoria Police as evidence of an appropriate response after Celeste’s murder, was never mandated, embedded or consistently applied. It is similar to the need for electronic monitoring, which Aggie has been advocating for since her daughter’s death.

The government’s failure to make progress in these areas means that police efforts will not be able to catch up with how these crimes are rapidly evolving. The fact is that in Victoria police technology is operating on outdated systems and outdated technology which is decades behind. Andrew Rule’s Life and Crimes podcast with David Bartlett, a former VicPol detective and Australian Crime Commission investigator, talks about this very issue.

Criminals adopt encrypted apps and AI tools virtually overnight, and police are at minimum 10 to 15 years behind. He goes on to explain that nearly half of all reported crimes, the number is 46.3 per cent, go unresolved, not because officers lack commitment – that is not the problem at all – but because they are ‘drinking from a fire hose’ with outdated tools. The Jill Meagher case in 2012 shows why this matters: it took 85 hours, three full days, for critical CCTV footage to reach investigators. That delay gave the killer time to return, to collect her body and to bury it.

These inefficiencies are a direct result of government policy decisions. This year, the government has rolled out AI-driven licensing systems and committed billions of dollars to smart transport upgrades. Police are still swamped with paperwork, drowning in red tape and stuck in procurement cycles which move extremely slowly. This government also has a laser-like focus on building things like the Suburban Rail Loop, so money and resources are continually diverted away from essential services. There are cuts to Court Services Victoria, which have been ordered to find over $106 million in savings over four years, including $26.1 million in savings this financial year. The government has cut $77 million from Victorian courts. It has cut family violence delivery and primary prevention funding by $32.5 million. And, of course, it has weakened bail laws. How can we expect the courts, the police and the support services to effectively implement these limited reforms when they are asked to be doing more and more with less and less? This is the fundamental contradiction that undermines this bill’s effectiveness.

If you make laws, you also must ensure that they are properly enforced and resourced. So I need to say this plainly: the government has buried the VLRC report and only pulled it out now, when they need to get some legislation rammed through because of the election. But the reality is this reform abandons those who fall outside the scope of these limited reforms. It abandons those who were experiencing cyberstalking. It abandons those who need better police technology, training and response. So we will not oppose this bill, but we do commit to holding this government accountable because this is, frankly, not good enough. Celeste Manno deserves better, as does her family and the thousands of women and girls that are being stalked and harassed in Victoria. They all deserve better. The VLRC has provided a road map, the community has provided evidence and you have to do more. To quote Aggie, again:

[QUOTE AWAITING VERIFICATION]

Victims were promised meaningful change. What has been delivered falls well short of the VLRC’s recommendations and the commitments made in Celeste’s name. The devastating and undeniable fact is this: this government has erased Celeste from the very reforms her murder triggered.

Advocates like Aggie Di Mauro have provided incredible moral clarity, and we ought to take heed. What is missing is this government’s will to respond to this crisis with a sense of urgency. So far, it has moved at an absolutely glacial pace. Until the government implements the full set of recommendations and takes this issue seriously, seeing any government member, minister or even the Premier participating in a march will ring hollow. All it will do is rub salt in the wounds of victims.

In closing, I want to say this, and I know that Aggie is watching; I know her family is watching. The day my whole career took a different turn was the day that I attended Celeste’s candlelight vigil. It was that day that I made a decision that I was not just going to turn up here and do speech after speech that meant nothing but I was going to fight for this change. And I honestly believe if I get to the end of my career and those changes are not made, my career will have been a failure. And I want to say in closing: if we are not willing to be honest and to face up to the gaps that leave victims at risk, I do not believe any of us are worthy of sitting in these seats, so I challenge the government to do better.

 Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (10:35): I rise to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Family Violence, Stalking and Other Matters) Bill 2025. This bill strengthens protections for victim-survivors affected by family violence, stalking and sexual violence. The Greens support reforms that make the justice system safer, more humane and more effective for victim-survivors. This bill contains a package of long-awaited practical changes that a number of advocates, stakeholder organisations and victim-survivors have pushed for over many years.

Taking a look at what this bill does improve, first, the bill moves to reduce the exhausting back-to-court again-and-again cycle by establishing a two-year default length for final family violence intervention orders. It also sensibly recognises the heightened risk around release from custody by setting the default family violence intervention order length where a respondent is imprisoned for family violence offending as the effective sentence plus an additional 12 months. Secondly, it strengthens service and enforcement so that protections begin sooner. The bill lowers the threshold for substituted service from ‘not possible’ to ‘not practicable’ and allows the court to make substituted service orders on its own motion, and it also creates a clearer pathway for service on respondents in prison by deeming service effected in certain circumstances when documents are left with a prison governor. Thirdly, the bill addresses gaps in protection. It ensures that orders can be made even where some or all family violence occurred outside Victoria and the affected family member was outside Victoria. This is a real issue, particularly for folks in border communities or those who have fled across jurisdictions. The bill also ensures young people listed on a parent’s order do not age out at 18 and have to start again – rather, that protections continue. Fourth, it takes meaningful steps to reduce misidentification and systems abuse. The bill adds additional considerations to reduce the risk of misidentifying the predominant aggressor and to better account for children and people with a cognitive impairment. It also modernises the definition of family violence to expressly capture stalking, systems abuse and mistreatment of animals, reflecting what frontline workers and victim-survivors have been saying for years about additional coercive control tactics.

This bill also implements elements of the Victorian Law Reform Commission work on stalking, including extending certain witness protections and prerecorded evidence procedures to stalking matters, particularly for children and people with cognitive impairment. Victoria Legal Aid has welcomed the bill, including the stronger recognition of misidentification and systems abuse, whilst emphasising that clearer pathways to rectify misidentification and better systemwide data do remain necessary beyond what is contained in this bill. The Greens agree – legislation can set better rules for courts, but culture, practice, training and accountability, particularly in first response policing, must all improve as well. Stakeholders have provided us with constructive proposals on the gaps that the bill leaves open, including the need to further clarify and extend how misidentification factors are applied and ensuring protections are real in practice, not just on paper. They have raised concerns about operational details – for example, how these reforms interact with police-issued notices and court processes – and how to ensure that victim-survivors are not further harmed by systems misuse. So in committee the Greens will be asking about implementation, resourcing and safeguards, including training facilities and technology for recording evidence, support services, interpreters and intermediary capacity. My colleague Ms Gray-Barberio will also make a contribution on some of the factors, particularly around misidentification, that stakeholders have raised with us.

This bill, however, is an overdue and necessary step forward. It will make it easier to obtain and maintain protection, reduce retraumatisation, modernise the law to reflect coercive control realities like stalking and systems abuse and extend important witness protections. We recognise that passing this bill is just one step of the needed reforms, and the Greens will keep pushing, particularly for funding and implementation support, to allow the community legal sector to ensure that these changes deliver real safety in women’s lives and for those affected by family violence. The Greens will be supporting the bill.

 Jacinta ERMACORA (Western Victoria) (10:40): I am particularly proud to speak on this bill this morning. This bill aims to improve the safety and experience of victim-survivors across the family violence and criminal justice systems. Let us be clear here: this is largely about women. It is yet another example of the Allan Labor government’s commitment to tackling the insidious and persistent problem of family violence and the systemic intimidation of women in our society. Family violence is the number one law and order issue in Victoria today. I think we have got a long way to go before we restructure our response systems to reflect that, but this bill is another piece in the jigsaw puzzle of reform in this space. I am so proud that the Andrews and Allan Labor governments have worked so hard on family violence and women’s safety.

I want to talk briefly about a personal experience as a very tiny little girl in prep at my primary school in Timboon. How we define stalking, for example, is extremely important, because when I reflect on having been followed around by a little boy not much bigger than myself from a year level above in the first three months of my school experience – I had to hide in the girls’ toilets – I had no idea that this was something wrong, that I could report it, that I could even get relief or that I had a right to be safe in the playground. My very first experience in the playground – I must admit I did make a lifelong best friend in that same playground, so it was not all bad – was being stalked, according to the more appropriate definition of stalking that is in this bill. The main thing that I remember personally is a deep feeling of intimidation. I was incredibly fearful. Everything was new anyway, and my feeling of intimidation was just overwhelming.

This is why it is so important for us to do bills like this. Sometimes it looks like it is just a little tinker around the edges to refine things, but these bills are part of the bigger jigsaw puzzle of reforms, as I said. It is so important to keep talking about this, to make sure that we can measure it and that we can articulate what the appropriate behaviours are and what the appropriate responses are to people experiencing stalking. The only way that is going to happen is if we legislate and make sure that it happens. This is a perfect example of why if we keep thinking the same things and if we keep doing the same things, we will get the same outcomes. I cannot say how proud I am and how pleased I am with this, and I hope that plenty of other women perhaps may reframe or reinterpret experiences that they might have had at some point in their life and realise that it was not acceptable, although they thought it was at the time. If this gives voice to other women and other victims of stalking – and there are also men who are victims of stalking – then that is a very good thing. The bill does not just address stalking, but I will go on with that. I wanted to share that little story, because at my age, to remember something that happened in prep, it must have really had a bit of an imprint on me.

The bill will also amend a range of acts to support victim-survivors of family violence and gender-based violence more broadly. It has been developed in consultation with a broad range of stakeholders, and importantly, many of the reforms were suggested by victim-survivors, whose input has been invaluable.

If we go on to misidentification of victims, which is an element within this bill, victim-survivors and their advocates have consistently raised concerns about the harm caused by misidentification of victims as perpetrators. This is more likely to occur for Aboriginal people, particularly Aboriginal women; migrant and refugee women; women with disabilities; and LGBTIQA+ people as well. Misidentification can occur in a range of circumstances. This includes where the victim-survivor’s presentation and characteristics are misinterpreted or when they have used retaliatory force to protect themselves or another person from family violence. This could be experiencing that last straw of being persecuted for weeks or months or a long period of time, and then suddenly there is an explosion of emotion and this retaliation occurs and it looks like perpetrator behaviour. It is not simple to unpick, but it is something that, as I said before, we need to describe and define so that we can do our best to identify it.

Misidentification can have devastating consequences. Victims may be excluded from their homes or lose contact with their children, or they may be drawn into the criminal justice system as respondents, with potentially lifelong consequences. I imagine that if you are drawn into the criminal justice system and you are a victim, you do not even know how to respond to defend yourself. In fact I think you would be less armed to defend yourself, because you are not even thinking with a perpetrator mindset. This bill, to address this, requires decision-makers to consider a broad range of personal and social characteristics when making family violence orders. These factors include consideration of whether actions may have been done to protect themselves or others, and decision-makers must also take into account the greater risk of misidentification if the party is one of a specified cohort, such as Aboriginal women.

The bill also modernises the definition of family violence. The bill expands the legal definition of family violence by expressly including stalking, systems abuse and harm to animals as forms of family violence. This is not the first time harm to animals has been included in some components of legislation in this chamber. I certainly acknowledge the work that Jaala Pulford, my predecessor, has done in this space as well. It recognises the prevalence of stalking in family violence situations. This reflects the lived reality of such behaviours, particularly in today’s digital age. Therefore it explicitly enables courts to prohibit the use of electronic tracking devices to stalk family members where there is not consent. I must admit I was thinking, ‘My husband and I, we know where we are all the time,’ but that is okay if we both consent. To weaponise that technology – that social media – is really what this is about, and this bill will enable the courts to specifically prohibit that. We cannot always expect victims and survivors to list everything that they need to make themselves safe, so this is why we need to enshrine it in the processes of the criminal justice system. The bill also makes certain changes to the criminal law offence of stalking, which is very positive, as I have said.

Systems abuse is also recognised as a form of family violence. Systems abuse refers to actions such as vexatious court applications, false police reports and false reports to child protection, child and family services, immigration or other agencies.

I certainly came across a couple of cases at the South Western Centre Against Sexual Assault when I worked there years ago where the perpetrator was clearly reporting the victim in a false scenario. The only mechanism that the police force had was to follow the linear approach; they were completely not equipped to respond to the possibility that it might have been vexatious or a form of systems abuse. That is why it is really important to document this, to articulate it. Harm to animals, such as to a beloved pet or an assistance animal, is also recognised as a form of coercion. The courts will be empowered to make orders relating to animals, including threats to sell or abandon the pet or withholding food or water. I am very sad to say that I have also had a case of a woman whose abuser, her husband, threatened to kill their family pet, and the burden that she carried in that, the life of an animal, was an awful form of abuse.

In extending the family violence intervention orders the bill introduces a default two-year duration, and this makes a lot of sense, because once that abuse dynamic is established and evidenced or even meets the criteria for an order, it is not going to go away quickly. I think we have heard in our mainstream media enough stories of where that system has fallen down and crimes have occurred as a result, so the two-year default rule for family violence intervention orders is a very good thing. The logic of extending it by 12 months after release from prison is also an absolutely logical result as well. What that means is that when the offender is released from prison they cannot immediately re-establish the abuse dynamic they were imprisoned for in the first place. Aligning family violence intervention orders with custodial sentences, as I said, is also a very positive thing. With young people, the intervention orders will continue as they are – they are not necessarily going to be an automatic 18 years of age – but for young adults that may still be living at home or financially dependent who are exposed to ongoing family violence, they can go beyond their 18th birthday. It would be a form of systems abuse from the inside by not extending it beyond their birthday.

This bill also tidies and tightens up some rules around service of intervention orders, particularly in prisons, which is good. If there is a refusal there from an inmate, the governor can be served, which is also a very positive thing. Currently, children of any age can be subject to family violence intervention orders, and children who are very young are unlikely to be able to properly understand their obligations and even the potential to incur criminal charges or contravention. The bill will introduce a minimum age of 12 years for family violence intervention orders, consistent with the minimum age of criminal responsibility.

On changes to criminal laws regarding stalking, as I have mentioned, the Victorian Law Reform Commission stalking report recommended a range of changes, basically around two or more incidences or occasions of a particular behaviour, and they do not need to be the same behaviour – they can be different behaviours. Historically the definition of stalking has been very codified and very tight and difficult to prove, so this enables the conduct to be assessed as a pattern of behaviour designed to cause fear and stress or harm. If I go back to the very start of my contribution here this morning, fear, stress and fear of harm were what it was all about for me when I was in prep for those first few months at Timboon primary, and I think it is really important that those characteristics are codified within our criminal justice system so they can be taken into account when the issues come before the courts. Again, I just want to say I am very proud of this legislation. I am so proud of what the Allan Labor government is doing. All power to our arm, and I think we really need to continue.

 David DAVIS (Southern Metropolitan) (10:55): I am pleased to rise and make a contribution to this bill, the Justice Legislation Amendment (Family Violence, Stalking and Other Matters) Bill 2025. I thank my colleague Dr Heath who spoke just ahead of me on this, and I note that the opposition, the Liberals and Nationals, will not oppose this bill. It reforms family violence intervention order processes; expands and updates the offence of stalking; introduces a structured alternative verdict framework, adjusts criminal procedure; and as has been pointed out a number of times already, makes some useful changes with respect to the recognition of animals and stalking by a family member. These are all important changes, and we do not oppose those changes.

I note that the system is under enormous pressure at the moment. We have seen the number of police fall. Whatever the matter that is needing to be dealt with, our policemen and policewomen face the fact that they have got less staff, a growing population and growing challenges, including these family violence matters. The state government has allowed the number of police to fall very, very significantly and that in my view is a significant concern. It is true that since Jacinta Allan came to power crime is up and police are down. There has been a reduction in operating hours at dozens of police stations and a loss of 367 full-time equivalent officers since Jacinta Allan took the premiership.

I know this is applying in local areas. In my own electorate, in Kew the hours have been cut back massively, and that is a concern. I am aware of cases of people having gone to the police station – these can be domestic violence cases or they can be other cases too – to seek support and help, and the police station is closed. This is completely unacceptable. In Ashburton, for example, the government has over recent years wound back the number of police and closed the station by stealth. That is problematic. We are very aware of what this is doing in the local area, talking to local people, receiving information from them and them responding to surveys. I note on the Ashburton police station that Linda said:

[NAMES AND QUOTES AWAITING VERIFICATION]

Nobody feels safe in their homes anymore. There aren’t many police stations open in my area, and given Mount Waverley is allegedly a safe area despite rising crime, I suspect they’ll pull the PSOs from Glen Waverley line to redeploy elsewhere.

Robin said:

We live in fear around what is happening, and I’ve been a victim. The station reopening is a necessity.

That was with respect to Ashburton. Ben said:

I’ve witnessed too many times a complete disregard for law in the area. Youths know there’s no one to catch them making offences. Raising a small family in the area. I’m always on guard around parks, leaving our home at any point. We’ve now installed multiple cameras around our home, something a few years ago I wouldn’t have thought I’d be doing.

Brooke said:

Our car was attempted to be broken into right underneath our security cameras. Clear video footage. Had to go to Glen Waverley from Ashburton to report it. Crazy.

John said:

Just in the past week my neighbour’s car was broken into in daylight hours. My neighbour has not reported it as he believes that it would be a waste of time. Today I stopped in the Ashburton village and noticed the Mr Burton café and the old Sergio’s pizza shop had broken front door glass. We need police on the beat.

I could go on repeatedly discussing these sorts of examples. There is a lot of this material coming into my electorate office. People believe that there should be proper policing in the local area, in Ashburton, but it is right across the electorate as well, and I think it is true elsewhere around the state.

We have got a state government that has lost the plot on these points, that has not understood that we need proper policing and proper resourcing. The state government has really not understood what is important here. It is interesting that in the bureau of statistics figures that came out the other day Boroondara has lost the equivalent of 5.3 full-time equivalent police officers. Monash has lost the equivalent of 6.02 full-time police officers. Stonnington has lost a total of 12.95 full-time equivalent police officers. That is a significant hit on the workforce in that area. Whether they are dealing with family violence matters, whether they are dealing with theft, whether they are dealing with home invasions – whatever it is – the reduced number of police means people will feel less safe. The community will not have the support that it needs. Glen Eira has lost a total of 3.21 full-time equivalent police officers, so the state government is winding down the amount of police support.

They are doing this at a time when the crime rate is going up in Boroondara – and I quoted Kew there, but it is also true that includes Ashburton. The crime rate is up more than 21 per cent – 21.8 per cent – year on year. In Monash it is up 15 per cent. These are big increases in the amount of crime at the same time as the number of police are falling in our local area and at the same time as the state government is closing or winding back police station hours. So there is the idea of closing a station, as has occurred in Ashburton – and there has not been a word said by Mr Fregon; he has been silent as a church mouse on this. For some reason he does not want to speak about these issues of public safety, community safety, the availability of police officers to protect the community – again, whatever the issue is that needs to be dealt with. It could be domestic violence in this case that we are talking about here, or it could be other matters. We are seeing increasing numbers of home invasions, increasing numbers of car thefts. These are things that make people very, very frightened.

And you cannot blame the policemen and policewomen for the lack of resources. It is not their fault that the government is stripping out police resources, winding back the hours of police stations and in some cases, like Ashburton, flat closing, by stealth, the police station. It is completely and utterly unacceptable. We are going to be focusing on this very strongly, and the community needs to understand that we need that proper policing, we need the police numbers increased, we need stations open, we need people able to go to their local police station with safety and security. Again as I say, it could be a whole variety of different conditions, but all of them are impacted when the police men and women are pulled out of the area.

Jacinta Allan has presided over a fall in the number of police. It is disgraceful, and it is time it was called out very strongly, so I will be saying more about this. I will be making the point on this bill that there are some good changes in the bill and that we are not opposing the bill, but the context of policing is a big problem in this state, and it is entirely due to the Labor Party’s incompetence and decision to pull police out of stations, to pull police resources out of the police force. You cannot blame the independent police; you cannot blame the police men and women. It is Jacinta Allan’s fault in the end.

 Anasina GRAY-BARBERIO (Northern Metropolitan) (11:04): I want to firstly acknowledge and honour victim-survivors: women, children and young people and their much-loved pets. As we debate this legislation I want to centre on their resilience and courage in the face of harm that can be torturous, prolonged and at times catastrophic. Family and domestic violence can happen to anyone. It is a national epidemic cutting across income, culture, age, gender, ability, place, profession and migration status. But let us be clear about one thing: family violence must be understood in the context of a society that privileges male identity over female or gender-diverse identity.

Structural and gender inequalities produce devastating consequences affecting all women, yet we are supposed to soften our rage and to be patient while frontline workers continue to be stretched thin, supporting victim-survivors on shoestring budgets while demand reaches record highs. I maintain my anger and rage because frontline workers, victim-survivors, experts and communities all say the same thing: deaths at the hands of family violence are preventable. They are preventable, and until we face that reality, we cannot accept half-measures.

That is why this bill before the chamber, the Justice Legislation Amendment (Family Violence, Stalking and Other Matters) Bill 2025, is needed, and I join the cause of my colleague Ms Copsey and offer my support for this legislation. This bill is needed, but unfortunately it has taken far too long to arrive here. In that time too many women, children and young people and their pets have continued to die or be harmed, stalked, abused or harassed and in a lot of cases misidentified as perpetrators in cases where they were clearly victim-survivors doing everything to stay alive and protect themselves.

Here in Victoria reports increased by 6 per cent between 2023 and 2024 alone and by 30 per cent over the past five years. First Nations women are 45 times more likely to experience family violence than non–First Nations women. One in three migrant and refugee women have experienced family violence, with nine in 10 experiencing controlling behaviour. The risk spikes for women on temporary visas, where migration-related abuse is very common. The RED HEART movement, led by Sherele Moody of Femicide Watch, which tracks every known Australian woman and child killed as a result of murder, manslaughter or neglect, collected some of this data which I am going to read out over the last few years.

In 2024, 105 women and 21 children were killed; in 2025, 77 women and 26 children were killed; this year, just mere weeks into 2026, already six women and one child killed. These are harrowing numbers that represent real people’s lives lost: mothers, grandmothers, sisters, aunties, friends, colleagues. But we also know that the true number of women and children killed by domestic abuse is likely higher, with many deaths not reported and not recognised as being the result of family and gender-based violence. Just yesterday we marked two years since Samantha Murphy, a mum and wife, went out for a run and never came home. Her family is left with the trauma, and her children are left to grow up without a mum. Just recently Aboriginal woman Sophie Isabelle Quinn, her unborn child and her aunty Nerida Quinn were shot dead allegedly by her former partner, who is still on the run.

This is the cost of family violence. It is real for so many. We have heard so many in this chamber talk about their experiences. Going for a run – people do not think about it, but it is political, because when women go out for a run, go out to exercise, they have to think twice about what route they are going to take, what time they should be running. Is it light enough? Is it too dark to go for a run? This is the reality that women face every day – something as simple as exercising is bloody political. So many women out there – young, old, different cultures – always have to constantly think, to look behind their back. As soon as the sun sets, they have to think twice about ‘Okay, if I need to get home, I need to stick on the main road to ensure my safety.’ This is the scale of the scourge of domestic and family violence that our society has been reduced to at the moment.

While we talk about this, let us also take pause and acknowledge the children and young people who are too often overlooked in this conversation and debate. We must remember that they are not passive bystanders in violent environments. The harm they experience does not fade with time. Their experiences and realities often shape their safety, their wellbeing, and their futures.

I want to take a moment in this debate to point out the importance of the difference between equity and equality in the prevention of violence against women. Equality assumes everyone is treated the same regardless of their need and situation. Equity recognises that women are treated differently depending on their need and situation and therefore requires responses tailored to those needs and situations. This distinction matters because women are not a homogenous group. As legislators, we must consider how layered identities create barriers to reporting violence, escaping violence and accessing specialised support. If we are serious about prevention and protection, equity must be at the centre of our policies and responses.

The bill before us takes important steps to address longstanding gaps in our family violence system. It improves family violence intervention orders, including introducing a minimum age of 12 for respondents. It expands the legal definition of family violence to explicitly include stalking, systems abuse and mistreatment of animals. It provides explicit recognition of systems abuse, acknowledging that perpetrators can use institutions such as courts, child protection, migration processes or Centrelink as tools of coercion and control. It ensures young people listed on their parents’ order remain protected even after they turn 18 and implements key recommendations from the Victorian Law Reform Commission’s 2022 Stalking: Final Report. These are good reforms and they are much needed, but they are also well overdue and come after years of tireless waiting by our stretched and hardworking family violence sector.

But this bill does have shortcomings, and it is important to highlight that. It fails to deliver a truly intersectional approach for the prevention of and intervention in domestic and family violence for all women across Victoria. So we are talking about First Nations women, migrant and refugee women, women with disabilities, trans women, young women, elderly women. Now, I have spoken before in this place about the misidentification of victim-survivors, with Aboriginal women disproportionately affected by this. This bill goes some way to addressing the harm by requiring police and courts to consider factors such as age, race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability when issuing orders of safety notices. We know that misidentification occurs most commonly when police issue a family violence safety notice. The Greens do have concerns that the current drafting of the bill may not be strong enough to support the bill’s intent. The list of factors outlined in section 24(2)(d) need to be more prescriptive and clearly name the characteristics at disproportionate risk, such as women; LGBTQI+; culturally, linguistically and faith diverse; Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander; living with a physical or cognitive disability and/or mental illness; on a temporary visa; or children and young people. This would allow police to conduct more accurate, trauma-informed assessments. Further, the bill’s use of terms like ‘respondent’ and ‘affected family member’ pre-empt the very assessment police are meant to make and risk locking in assumptions too early.

The intention of these changes is to guard against premature assumptions and to ensure a neutral and evidence-based assessment of whether a family violence safety notice is required. Description of the parties should be neutral to avoid misidentification. Without clearer language, stronger guidance and an explicit focus on misidentification at every stage, including applications to vary or revoke a family violence intervention order, there is still a real risk that the system will continue to misidentify victims, enable the systems abuse that it is trying to get rid of and undermine women’s safety as a result.

If this reform is to work, it must reflect how family violence actually presents, including self-protection, patterns of abuse and the real-world pressures on frontline decision-makers.

These changes recognise that family violence is not only interpersonal but structural and that our justice system must actively prevent further harm rather than compound it.

It is crucial that the implementation phase of this legislation carefully considers the equity lens I spoke about earlier in the speech and the layered forms of violence experienced by different women and their children. This Labor government’s own anti-racism strategy recognises that government services are culturally unsafe and difficult to navigate for First Nations people. If the Labor government can acknowledge this is a systemic failure, then it must confront the intersectional experiences of women when it comes to systems abuse.

While I spoke earlier about these welcome legislative changes, reforms alone are not enough. The responsibility, for example, cannot fall solely on the Minister for Prevention of Family Violence and her department to solve this epidemic. It must be a whole-of- government approach, with prevention of family violence integrated into the work of the housing, health and justice portfolios, to name a few, to really deliver holistic, equity-focused approaches. Women presenting to specialist services face intersecting crises – housing insecurity, homelessness, poverty, incarceration, substance abuse, natural disasters, age, mental health challenges and disability – all of which compound their vulnerability and make timely support essential.

We saw the consequences of this in the Labor government’s most recent budget. Women and children given priority access to social housing because of family violence are expected to wait 17.4 months. That is a year and a half of waiting. That is really shameful. And this comes just months after this Labor government failed to fund the operation of 28 high-security crisis units for women and children fleeing family violence, leaving them empty during a worsening housing and domestic violence crisis. This must be looked at.

The Greens demand an intersectional response to family violence, and while this bill is a step in the right direction, Labor once again simply has not gone far enough. We, the Greens, renew calls for sustained investment in family violence prevention, early intervention and specialist support services and to treat violence against women as the significant and escalating crisis that it is. Reforms must be backed by resources or they risk being symbolic rather than transformative.

All women and gender-diverse people have the right to live free from violence, discrimination and systemic harm. Women, their families, their friends and their communities are tired of attending vigils, rallies, protests honouring their family members whose lives have been stolen by men’s violence. The Greens will continue to fight to end gender-based violence and we urge the government to take this seriously. The reforms cannot end here; there is plenty more to do.

 Ryan BATCHELOR (Southern Metropolitan) (11:18): I rise to speak in support of the Justice Legislation Amendment (Family Violence, Stalking and Other Matters) Bill 2025. The government’s work to address violence against women and children in Victoria never stops; it cannot stop until the violence ends. It is a topic that we have, as a government, been focused on since we initiated the nation-leading Royal Commission into Family Violence back in early 2015 and responded to and implemented all 227 recommendations of that royal commission. It is something that this Labor government has been absolutely focused on for a decade, and we continue to invest – another $172 million in this year’s budget to support victims, improve data systems and bolster services. But we know there is more to do, and until the violence ends, there will be more to do.

This bill strengthens family violence intervention orders. It broadens the definition of family violence, recognising that family violence holds many forms. It widens the scope to include protections for those fleeing to Victoria to escape family violence that is perpetrated interstate, and it makes it easier for victims to give evidence against their perpetrators.

Our message is very, very clear not just with this bill but with the entire suite of reforms that Labor have championed since we have been in government: violence against women and children will not be tolerated. To the victim-survivors of family violence, this is another extension of our hands to say that we are with you and that your security is a priority.

Before I continue, I just want to respond to some of the claims that Mr Davis made in his contribution, some of the fearmongering that he was trying to get into about policing in this state. This Labor government has invested considerably in bolstering the number of sworn officers and the operational capability of Victoria Police, and to suggest otherwise is a complete misconstruing of the facts and of reality. Mr Davis made claims without sourcing about police numbers here in Victoria, and this is what I can say: according to comparable national data released by the Productivity Commission, Victoria has more police officers than any other state – that is a fact. There are more officers in Victoria Police than in any other state, not just as a proportion compared to population but actual police officers in Victoria. More than New South Wales, more than any other jurisdiction – that is a fact. If you go back, Mr Davis made a claim that police numbers in Victoria are falling. Let us have a look at the last decade. In the last decade – I went and did this just now; it is not that hard to do – you can see that the number of operational sworn officers in Victoria has increased by more than 20 per cent. Not falling – rising over the course of the last decade, over the course of the investments that the Labor government has made in Victoria Police and is making to recruit additional officers. We have made a record $4.5 billion investment, including funding for more than 3600 additional police.

Mr Davis strayed into some territory which could be quite troubling when it comes to how the Liberal Party would approach operational decisions that are the purview of the chief commissioner. Matters around police operations and response, including staffing levels and opening hours of individual police stations, are under the law the responsibility of the Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police, and that is exactly what they should be. I would be worried if senior members of the Liberal Party stood up and purported to direct the chief commissioner in the deployment of Victoria Police resources. I think it is a very dangerous line to tread, and I will be watching Mr Davis and other members of the Liberal Party to see how much they want to interfere with the chief commissioner’s exercise of his powers over how Victoria Police are deployed. Victoria Police is resourced to deliver a 24/7 response to crime in Victoria, and we have confidence in the chief commissioner in the deployment of those responsibilities. I am not sure that the same can be said, given those words, of Mr Davis.

This bill seeks to do a range of things, and I want to just briefly touch on what it does with respect to family violence intervention orders, because intervention orders are a critical mechanism by which victim-survivors of family violence, those who have had family violence perpetrated against them, are able to keep themselves safe from violence. The court orders enforce protection on a person or their children when faced with violence by a family member. Currently most intervention orders are made for a period of 12 months or less. But this bill is going to introduce a default length of at least two years for family violence intervention orders through amendments to the Family Violence Protection Act 2008, and where the perpetrator is serving a custodial sentence of a year or more the default period will be the total effective sentence plus 12 months. This provides family violence victim-survivors with certainty that they will continue to be protected even when perpetrators are released from prison, a period which we know is a heightened risk for a victim. It is also going to streamline some processes for intervention orders, improving the experience for victim-survivors who apply for the orders.

It will also enable courts to issue family violence intervention orders even if the offending behaviour occurs outside the state of Victoria. Through amending the Family Violence Protection Act the bill provides that orders can be made where both the violence that occurred and the family member affected was outside Victoria. The current law allows for one or the other but not both, and it is important that it captures that full suite. We want to make sure that Victoria is a safe place for victim-survivors of family violence wherever it occurs. It also takes some measures to reduce misidentification. We know that is an issue and has been an issue for some time, but issues to do with misidentification are currently not recognised in legislation. The changes in this bill require courts to consider if the respondent to a family violence intervention order has been misidentified. We are also broadening definitions of family violence in this bill to expressly reference stalking within the definition of family violence, implementing a recommendation of the Victorian Law Reform Commission’s report into stalking, and extending witness protections.

As I said at the start of my speech, this Labor government is committed to ending violence against women and their children. It has been a core focus of this government since we were elected and since we set up the nation-leading family violence royal commission in 2015. Our commitment to ending violence against women and their children has not abated and will not abate. I commend the bill to the house.

 Moira DEEMING (Western Metropolitan) (11:26): I too rise to speak on this very, very important bill today. This bill supposedly exists because of a tragedy where a young woman was stalked and murdered – Celeste Manno was killed in her family home in Mernda in November 2020 after a man developed a fixation on her and things escalated. Celeste and her mother did everything right. They were terrified; they were right to be terrified. They recognised that this man was unhinged. They reported him over and over. They could get no help. Then, tragically, Celeste was murdered in the same house that her mother was sleeping in.

For more than a decade and probably time immemorial stalking has been an issue. The main perpetrators have been men and the victims have been women and children. We know that in the last decade this issue has been reported to police over and over again, but police could not respond properly because the laws were unfit. The Victorian Law Reform Commission (VLRC) records more than 25,000 stalking offences reported in the 10 years leading up to the 2020 murder of Celeste Manno. These reports describe persistent pursuit, intimidation, surveillance and fear. They describe patterns that specialists have long recognised as precursors to serious violence and murder. The commission delivered 45 recommendations and the so-called party of women have ignored them all apart from two. Stalking as it unfolds in real life is an escalation process. It is not good enough for this government to change a few things after things have escalated in the court and police section, right at the end, after everything has gone wrong, without doing anything at all to overhaul the system and actually provide preventative measures.

The Victorian government has restructured the stalking offence and aligned the definition used in personal safety intervention orders, improving consistency across legislation and reducing technical disputes, and given courts the power to issue interim personal safety intervention orders. As I said, these are both reactive, not preventative. The recommendations that the government chose to leave behind addressed how safety is actually delivered in real life. They are about de-escalation, prevention and avoidance of catastrophic outcomes such as murder. They addressed risk identification, police capability, evidence handling, victim support, court prioritisation, breach enforcement, offender management and accountability when cases fall away – all absolutely ignored by this government.

The VLRC recommended that stalking be treated as a pattern-based crime, requiring structured risk assessment, early identification of escalation and trained frontline police. They wanted the police to be able to recognise cumulative danger and react to it rather than treat each incident as a standalone event. At the moment frontline responses vary by location, who is on the desk, how much experience they have got and largely chance. In Celeste’s case, escalation outpaced any intervention or help she received, and that family paid the price.

The commission also recommended clear and enforceable standards for responding to breaches of intervention orders, urgent execution of warrants and escalation protocols when risk increases, as well as accountability. Noeline Dalzell was killed by her former partner in Seaford in 2020 in front of her children. The inquest heard that the police held a warrant for the perpetrator’s arrest but never executed it, even while he stayed at that victim’s home. Why wouldn’t you just incorporate those recommendations? The commission also recommended coordinated offender management systems, clear referral pathways, timeframes for engagement, service standards and monitoring of whether perpetrators actually receive intervention after orders are made. In 2022 a woman was killed two days after a family violence intervention order was served. The coroner later found that a referral for the perpetrator to receive behavioural support was never even processed. How could you leave such simple things unaddressed in this bill?

The VLRC also recommended specialised handling of stalking matters within the court system, including safeguards against identity misuse, tighter administrative controls and victim-centred court processes designed to prevent the system itself becoming a vector of harm. In Geelong a convicted stalker allegedly used two identities to obtain and amend an intervention order involving one of his former victims. Angela Jones has been dealing with a horrendous stalker for about a decade, who also hides behind multiple different IDs online. This bill is not going to help her, and God forbid her case escalates.

The VLRC also emphasised that these intervention orders function as safety instruments, and therefore they require operational integrity, precision and clarity at every single step of the way – drafting, printing, service and enforcement. The Magistrates’ Court of Victoria has acknowledged that during a period of time some printed family violence intervention orders had omitted whole sections of wording. I would not imagine that this government would make such a mistake when it was billing everybody for the taxes, levies and fees that they charge, but apparently women’s safety is not that important.

The VLRC also designed its recommendations around evidence proving that stalking sits on the pathway to lethal violence. In fact the pin-up girl for this commission inquiry was Celeste Manno, who was murdered. It recommended prioritisation, escalation, interruption and system-wide accountability commensurate with that risk, but then it ignored any of the measures that would go towards prevention.

Regarding electronic monitoring directly, the VLRC made two findings: first, that ankle bracelets and monitoring alone fail to stop stalking – I mean, that is obvious – but it also said that stalking prevention requires a strong, coordinated system to interrupt escalation early. I asked about this after the commission’s report. The Attorney-General decided that monitoring would not form part of Victoria’s response to stalking on the basis that it fails on its own, but then the government failed to assume their responsibility to deliver any of the substitute protections and frameworks that work, such as trained frontline police, consistent enforcement of intervention orders, rapid response to breaches, specialised court handling, practical victim support and system-wide accountability. All of those things sit inside the 43 recommendations that this government ignored.

Then we can talk about money. What little resources being changed here are not being improved with any extra money. Family violence service delivery funding has fallen by $24.2 million, from $811.1 million in 2024–25 to $786.9 million in the 2025–26 budget. Primary prevention of family violence funding has fallen by $8.3 million.

Victims of crime financial assistance funding has been going down for years: $74.2 million down to $70 million. Reporting in the media has constantly shown that staffing reductions at the Magistrates’ Court, including in family violence related roles, are one of the biggest issues. Yet again funding is reduced, and this cause is not addressed. The legal assistance sector has warned of this underfunding catastrophe.

We are going to support this bill, obviously, because it does some good, but I think it is actually pretty distasteful that the recommendations that have been ignored concern the exact issues that led to the murder of the victim whose case tragically led to this inquiry in the first place.

 Jeff BOURMAN (Eastern Victoria) (11:36): I rise to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Family Violence, Stalking and Other Matters) Bill 2025. For those that were here back when I started, my inaugural speech included a thing about family violence. My first experience with that was in the police force. I grew up in a fairly good family; there were no problems with anything like that. And lo and behold I found out that everyone else’s world was not as good as mine. I formed a view about family violence during my time there. And then I left and I have gone on through life, and as you live you experience, and hopefully you learn, and I have picked up some little bits and pieces here. In the days gone by I could never understand why women just allowed themselves to be assaulted or harassed, whatever it might be – why didn’t they just go? – which was extremely naive of me. As time has gone on, I have met people, I have learned things, and it is not nearly as simple as it may seem. It is not even close to being that simple.

There are two parts of this legislation that I particularly like because there is something I have learned. There is going to be a lot of doubletalk and roundabout talk and things like that because I have got to be careful about what I say. Misidentification – never in my life did I think misidentification could occur. How could the system misidentify the offender as the victim? Well, as it turns out, it is very easy. It is very easy because a lot of the time it is who gets in first, who tells a better story, and I have got to say, sometimes it is who presents themselves to the police. What I mean by that is that they may or may not be from an emergency management service, and as a policeman there is an inherent bias, for want of a better term, towards other emergency services. So when one of them rocks up and tells you a story, you tend to believe them, and the course that follows that is – I would not say it is tainted, but it is not right. And what happens is that before you know it, the victim is fighting a battle; the victim is the one being interviewed, and the victim is the one that gets a record.

This kind of segues into system abuse, because the victim also may or may not have access to funding or better access to funding. Let us say the victim may have what would normally be sufficient funding, but the offender has more, so what you have is assault by better funding. You have someone getting a better lawyer who just hammers the person, forcing them to spend money. I see that in a lot of family law stuff – that is not new – where I am watching someone just trying to drain someone else dry, and that is obvious. It is almost unavoidable, but it is an issue. Justice should be justice, not justice by bank account. There is the old adage ‘The best form of defence is offence.’ What is the best thing you can do when someone is coming for you? You go for them, and you go for them harder so they are fighting that and they are not coming for you.

Now, it is sometimes the case that the offender wins and sometimes the case the offender does not. I am fairly black and white on who is the offender. Sometimes it gets a little murky, but the thing I am thinking of is fairly clear.

What I am watching is the issue where someone who just wants to get on with their life is constantly going to court, constantly engaging a lawyer, constantly doing this and constantly doing that because the offender, who is an esteemed member of society, is not an esteemed member of society. One day I truly hope that it all comes out publicly. It is not me, before anyone asks. In the course of watching this go down, there are a lot of other things I have noticed. It is not just the police and judiciary that need to pay attention to the details that would give you the hint that it is not all it seems – that the offender may not be the offender, there is more to it. This is not a go at lawyers, but the lawyers will make a recommendation. They will give advice in the context of the information they have and the situation they see. The advice that they give at the time may well be good, legit advice. But when you unpick it and you unpack it and you open that box and that big thing of whoop-arse comes out, you go, ‘Well, that may not have been a great idea,’ because now you cannot have diversions if you have already accepted one. A diversion is not much of a record, but it is a record. As I said, I am not blaming the lawyers, but there needs to be training. Someone comes in and says something, ‘A situation has arisen, I need help’ – ‘Ah, just take a diversion; it’s all good.’ Normally, even with regard to a shooters licence, I would never say that anyway, because that can just lead to all sorts of problems. But it also may not be right. I feel that this legislation is actually going somewhere towards doing some good. It is not just platitudes. Is it perfect? I do not know. Is it going to work? I do not know; I do not have a crystal ball. If I had a crystal ball, I would be very rich and I would not be standing here. I see an actual try – a good go.

Mr Davis was on about police resourcing. That is a huge problem. It is a massive problem, because for all this to happen there needs to be resourcing. The courts need more resourcing. The time it takes to get these matters to court – the victim-survivor or victim, whatever you want to call them, is under immense amounts of stress and worry, whether it is personal safety or whether it is financial or whatever. I know we are in a financial crisis as a state, as a country, but I feel that police resourcing is not necessarily about money, it is about getting people there and keeping them, retaining them. That is another story for another day. When they opened the Moorabbin courts I thought, ‘Well, that’s a bit full-on. That’ll hardly get used.’ Well, Moorabbin court is now full. I cannot believe I am saying this: we need more magistrates and we need more courts if we are going to have these systems. Was it ‘Justice delayed is justice denied’? Stuff just takes too long. I also feel that we need a review of how the judiciary works in respect to how long things take. Do we need to do it this way? I know the amount of conferences you have before a contested hearing. In a lot of cases I have noticed that from the get-go it was going to be contested, so why have all these other conferences? Just get into it. It saves everyone time.

I have said pretty well all I have got to say. I support this bill. I want to see it work. There is always room for improvement, and we will get to that. But as I said, one day I hope I will be able to fill in the details on the other stuff.

 Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:44): I rise to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Family Violence, Stalking and Other Matters) Bill 2025. This is a bill that delivers important reforms to strengthen protections for victim-survivors of family violence, stalking and sexual offences. It modernises our justice system to better reflect lived experience, improve frontline responses and ensure victim-survivors are treated with dignity and respect.

The reforms that are in this bill build on reforms which have already been enacted by this government to work towards our justice system continuing to improve its response to the needs of victim-survivors of family violence, stalking and sexual offences. I wish to acknowledge the extensive work that the Attorney-General and her team have put into the formulation of the bill that is before us today and the real, tangible benefits it will bring but also acknowledge all the contributions from members across this chamber that I have had the privilege to listen to in the room or from afar today.

The amendments in this bill will strengthen family violence protections through various changes to the FVIOs, the family violence intervention orders, including introducing a presumption of a new minimum length for family violence intervention orders; requiring decision-makers to consider certain factors, before making or issuing a family violence safety notice, an FVSN, or making an FVIO, to reduce the risk of misidentification of the predominant aggressor; expanding the definition of ‘family violence’ to capture stalking, systems abuse and mistreatment of animals, as well as making clear that the court can make conditions relating to animals and stalking behaviours; ensuring that courts can make orders regardless of where the alleged violence occurred; and ensuring that a person listed as a protected person on their parent’s order continues to be protected once they turn 18. There are also important reforms that will allow courts to issue interim personal safety intervention orders, PSIOs, in bail and criminal proceedings and that will amend the Criminal Procedure Act 2009 to strengthen protections for victims of witnesses in stalking cases by extending specific witness protections to them.

I would also like to note that whilst the legislation that we have before us today is a very important step forward, it is not the only nor the sole part of the government’s response or actions in this space. Noting the Victorian Law Reform Commission’s report, which has been discussed extensively in the chamber already this morning, I note that not all of the recommendations in that report go specifically to the heart of legislative change. There are a number of other areas, such as with the screening assessment for stalking and harassment tool, otherwise known as the SASH tool, which are already being implemented side by side with this piece of legislative reform. For example, in that scenario Victoria Police has undertaken a pilot to trial the SASH tool. This is an evidence-based screening tool to identify relevant risk factors that should be addressed through ongoing case management, coupled with additional training and support for responding police. Following the independent evaluation of the pilot by Swinburne University of Technology just last year, in 2025, VicPol has now commenced the statewide rollout of the stalking response enhancement and has also committed to strengthening the capacity it has to identify and respond to stalking behaviour. This is focusing on the front line but also on the deeper investigative responses to the issue. Victoria Police is in the process of engaging authorised trainers to support the very critical training that is required for the statewide rollout of this program, with dedicated training forecast to be completed within the next 12 months. That is also work that is, though not part of this bill, another consequence of the VLRC’s recommendations that is currently being implemented.

The issue at heart is obviously a very, very serious issue. Family violence remains Victoria’s most serious law and order issue. In 2023 alone our state’s police responded to more than 94,000 family violence incidents; that is around one every 6 minutes, with nearly three-quarters of victims being women and girls. Behind each of those statistics is a person navigating fear, uncertainty and trauma. It is a shocking statistic and it is one that is certainly not unique to our state or our nation, but it is one that we are committed to and determined to address in every way that we can. This bill plays an important role in that.

I note that recently I had the opportunity to attend a crime forum in the City of Casey, which was held by the local police unit there, and it was very good to have some really good and constructive feedback from the police. Amongst some of the more perhaps visible concerns that we all had a good discussion about, the police were also very quick to remind everyone that this is one of the biggest issues that they deal with. Family violence is not seen in the same way as other forms of offending are, but that just goes to some of the insidious nature of it, because it is not seen. That is what makes it so important that we do everything that we can to address this issue, and that is why I am very pleased to see this bill before us today as one further step towards that.

This bill will modernise the definition of family violence to recognise that abuse is often coercive, ongoing and cumulative and not just a discrete physical incident. It explicitly includes stalking, systems abuse and mistreatment of animals, acknowledging how perpetrators will often use multiple forms of control to harm and intimidate their victim-survivors.

We are aware of how systems abuse can occur. Touching upon Mr Bourman’s comments in the speech prior to mine, perpetrators can in many cases very successfully misuse and abuse courts and government services, such as through false reports or vexatious applications, to continue exerting power over their victim-survivors. To address this form of abuse and the harm that it can cause, the bill introduces default two-year family violence intervention orders, providing longer protection and reducing retraumatising repeat court appearances. Longer FVIOs give victim-survivors greater stability and greater certainty, allowing them to rebuild their lives without having that constant looming deadline of returning to court again and again on such a frequent basis.

Where a perpetrator is in custody, FVIOs can now extend beyond release, recognising that the period immediately following release is perhaps the most heightened risk time. Young people who are listed on a parent’s FVIO will remain protected after turning 18, which closes a critical gap that previously forced them back into the court system at a particularly vulnerable moment. Victorian courts will also be able to issue FVIOs even where violence occurred interstate, a gap that is not covered in the existing legislation, ensuring protection is not limited by geography. And the bill improves the service of intervention orders, so protection starts sooner, including for respondents who attempt to avoid service.

I would like to touch on one specific component of these reforms, which regards animals being used to perpetrate family violence. It was probably about a year ago, maybe even a bit longer, that we had a debate in this chamber that was put to us by Ms Purcell raising this very issue. Many of us spoke on the deeply traumatic way in which people’s pets, people’s loved ones, loved pets can be used as a weapon against them when it comes to family violence, and what a shocking, shocking and disgusting thing that is to be done. Considerable work has been done since that time. I was very pleased to see the house, I believe, unanimously support that motion for this to be an issue looked at most seriously, and most seriously it has been looked at. This is now addressed in the reforms today, and I am very proud that the contributions that we made in this chamber some time ago have led towards this particular part of the bill now specifically addressing animal cruelty and abuse of animals as a tool for family and domestic violence.

This will do that by broadening the definition of family violence to capture some of the common ways that animals may be used to perpetuate this violence. These circumstances include where a perpetrator uses an animal to punish or control a victim-survivor by withholding the pet’s food, water or medication, or threatening harm to the animal. It makes clear that the court can make FVIO conditions in relation to pets. Perpetrators often will target the animal with which the victim-survivor has the greatest emotional connection. This goes to the cruelty of what this violence can look like. I think I will leave it at that as to why this is such an important part of the reform that I am very, very glad to see in this bill today.

As has already been discussed extensively, this bill will also seek to go to the heart of concerns around misidentification, where victim-survivors are identified as the perpetrators, which can disproportionately affect a number of groups, including people from migrant backgrounds, people with disabilities and indeed even people from the LGBTIQA+ communities. We know that the consequences can be devastating, and this bill now requires police and courts to actively consider misidentification and the possibility of it before issuing safety notices or FVIOs. This is a response to the lived experience that we have listened to, and it represents an important step towards a more trauma-informed justice system.

It also clarifies the stalking offence to make it easier to understand and to apply. It explicitly recognises threats of harm, and it will see that victims and witnesses in stalking matters will receive stronger court protections, reducing retraumatisation and repeated evidence giving. It will also implement some changes to the court processes themselves in order that victim-survivors do not have to repeatedly relive traumatic experiences, as well as restore the option of alternative verdicts in sexual offence trials, which also will help to ensure that cases do not collapse unnecessarily.

This bill as I said is one very important part of a broader package of reform work that is underway, and I am very pleased to be speaking in favour of its passing. This bill will make a real and tangible difference to the lives of many thousands of vulnerable Victorians, and I very much commend it to the house.

 Rachel PAYNE (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (11:56): I rise to speak on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Family Violence, Stalking and Other Matters) Bill 2025 on behalf of Legalise Cannabis Victoria. The scale of the family violence epidemic in our state is hard to comprehend. In the last financial year there were 106,403 family violence incidents – that is hundreds of incidents every day. To address a devastating problem of this kind we need a whole-of-system response that is victim-centred and informed by those working on the ground. That is what this bill before us today is. I would like to begin by acknowledging the work of the Victorian government in responding to family violence and working with stakeholders on crafting this bill. It includes so many important reforms that will allow us to better address and understand family violence, improving the lives of victim-survivors.

In relation to family violence intervention orders, it will introduce a new default length of two years for an order and ensure that a protected person on their parent’s order who turns 18 can remain protected for the duration of that order. Although courts can currently issue an order for any duration against adults, they are usually made for 12 months. These changes recognise that 12 months can be too short a time to appropriately manage risk and for the person subject to the order to address underlying risk factors. It also recognises the unnecessary harm caused by requiring victim-survivors to go back to court to apply for an extension and justify why an order is still needed. The silence of existing laws on the issue of young people ageing out of these orders once they turn 18 has created inconsistent approaches and unnecessary stress. These changes will better protect those who are often already experiencing so much trauma in their young lives.

I would like to turn now to the parts of this bill that respond to the risk of misidentification. This issue has been routinely raised with me during my time in Parliament by both the legal sector and victim-survivors. In the family violence context misidentification relates to who is determined to be the predominant aggressor. This can occur when a victim-survivor’s behaviour and presentation is misunderstood or they use retaliatory force to protect themselves and other members of their family. Unsurprisingly, certain groups who have long been misunderstood and discriminated against in our justice system are at much higher risk of being misidentified. These include Aboriginal people, particularly Aboriginal women; migrant and refugee women; women with disabilities; and LGBTIQ+ people. Victim-survivors that have been misidentified often then go on to experience a range of other barriers when trying to access services. They may face civil and criminal consequences, including loss of housing and the involvement of child protection. This can create a perverse situation where a victim-survivor of family violence has wrongly been identified as the predominant aggressor and is left homeless as a result – this should never be the case. The Family Violence Protection Act 2008 does not explicitly address the issue of misidentification. It is silent on its existence, prevalence, consequences and risk factors. This bill will require police and courts to consider if the respondent has been misidentified when they are applying for a family violence intervention order or a family violence safety notice.

Business interrupted pursuant to standing orders.