Thursday, 24 September 2026

 Renee HEATH (Eastern Victoria) (17:49): (2844) Every year since I have come to this place I have used my last speech to remember the life of Celeste Manno, a beautiful 23-year-old who was stalked by somebody that she worked with. She followed the law to a T and she got an intervention order. The intervention order was breached, and then the man, Luay Sako, was arrested for breaching it. On the way back from being released, he bought a knife and went silent for three months. He continued to stalk her, so much so that he found out where she lived, the layout of her house and all of her movements. In November 2020 she was asleep in her bed. He broke through her window with a hammer and violently stabbed her to death. The cause of death was a stab to the heart. Despite seeking help from police and legal protection, there were still no protections for her, not enough to keep her alive. It has just been absolutely tragic.

Her death prompted the Victorian Law Reform Commission to look at and to find what holes existed for people that were suffering stalking in Victoria, and the law reform commission came back with well over 40 recommendations. Some of those things have been done – you can get an intervention order through the court’s own motion and there have been some definitional changes – but still a lot of those recommendations have not been fulfilled. One of those is mandatory training for police to help them identify stalking behaviour. There still need to be upgrades to the law around things like cyberstalking. There still is not specialist support for stalking victim-survivors such as safety planning and such as the advocacy they need and such as counselling. People that are being stalked in non–‍family violence settings do not receive the same protections that those in family violence settings do. Police are not even required to help people that say they are being stalked, and I think it is because they cannot identify them properly. They still are not even referring people to make sure that their phones or their cars are not being tracked.

We are now six years on from the tragic death of Celeste Manno, and in her honour I will use my last speech of the whole year in this place to call on the Attorney-General. The action that I seek is for the Attorney-General to make sure every one of those recommendations that was handed down by the law reform commission of Victoria into stalking are implemented and that it is done soon.