2016-10-17
The Greens unambiguously support a national domestic violence order scheme. The Greens are amongst those many groups and individuals who have been calling for a national domestic violence order scheme for some time now, and it is very, very pleasing to see that the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) process is capable of producing these kinds of outcomes.
The intervention order system is at the core of our collective response to family violence and to violence against women. The central importance of intervention orders was re-emphasised by the royal commissioners in their report earlier this year. Many of the recommendations made by the commissioners are aimed at standardising and strengthening the intervention order scheme — for instance, by improving police responses to family violence call-outs and by improving the application process for intervention orders in Magistrates Courts. We know the reported and recorded numbers of family violence incidents are on the rise, and we also know that there are more applications for intervention orders at Magistrates Courts.
We all hope this reflects an increased willingness to report incidents when they occur and an increased willingness to apply for orders, rather than an increase in the number of incidents per se, though of course we cannot be sure. We know that the proportion of applications for intervention orders which are successful has also been on the rise. We all hope this reflects improved awareness and consciousness on the part of police, courts and lawyers about the importance of granting orders, rather than an increase in the severity of the incidents which give rise to the applications, though of course we cannot be sure of that either. Because past behaviour is the best predictor of future behaviour, many family violence incidents are an indication of future incidents which may be even more severe.
It is difficult to assess with absolute certainty the effectiveness of the intervention order system, but we do have some clues. While family violence incidents and applications for intervention orders have been on the rise, the number of patients presenting to clinics and hospitals with injuries caused by family members has actually been falling since the Family Violence Protection Act 2008 came into effect after it was enacted. Over the last decade the vast majority of family violence perpetrators, more than 63 per cent, did not record a second family violence incident. This data suggests that in very many cases intervention orders are having a positive effect on preventing future incidents of violence.
On the other hand, the proportion of family violence perpetrators who committed more than one incident per year has unfortunately increased since 2005. In 2005 the proportion of unique perpetrators who committed only one family violence incident per year was 82 per cent. By 2014 the proportion of unique perpetrators who committed only one family violence incident per year had decreased to 75 per cent, which means that the proportion of those who committed more than one incident per year increased.
Data like this demonstrates the need, as the royal commissioner identified, to improve our existing family violence intervention order scheme. A meta-analysis of available literature on the effectiveness of interventional orders, which was published in September 2010 in the Journal of the Academy of Psychiatry and the Law found that the effectiveness of intervention orders depends in part on the system within which they operate in practice. One of the biggest and most egregious gaps in the intervention order system is that it does not extend beyond state boundaries. It is unacceptable that a person who has successfully applied for an intervention order, say, in Queensland or New South Wales can then move to Victoria, or perhaps just come here on a holiday, and find that she is not protected by that intervention order while she is here, and it is unacceptable that a person who has successfully taken the difficult and courageous step to apply for an intervention order here is no longer protected by that order when they travel or move interstate.
So we welcome the COAG process that has resulted in this and the other equivalent pieces of legislation around the country, and we thank the government for bringing it to this chamber. The way the national domestic violence order scheme will work has been adequately canvassed by other members, so I will not go over the same ground. This bill will enact a well overdue reform. It will provide people who successfully apply for interstate equivalents of family violence intervention orders with the knowledge that the orders will continue to protect them when they come to Victoria.
The bill will also facilitate the transfer of information that will be necessary to ensure that people who successfully apply for family violence intervention orders in Victoria will be able to move or travel interstate without needing to register those orders in an interstate court. However, as Ms Crozier has pointed out, we do have one reservation, and that is that the bill has no commencement date. This means that even if we all vote in favour of the bill — and I strongly urge that we should — and even though the bill has also made its way through the lower house, nothing will change in practice right now. Women, children and men who move or holiday interstate will continue to be required to formally register their intervention orders with an interstate court if they want to avail themselves of its protection. The long title says the bill will provide for a national recognition scheme for domestic violence orders, but without a commencement date the bill does not actually do that at all.
The Attorney-General has explained that the government has concerns about the workability of the national database, which will underpin the national recognition scheme. I have to say I remain quite in the dark about the reason for the lack of a commencement date, notwithstanding the explanations provided by the Attorney-General and his department. Here is what I understand to be the case, to put it on the record. In December 2015 COAG issued a communiqué which announced the national scheme. This communiqué recognised that it would be some time — perhaps even years — before a national database of intervention orders becomes fully operational. So the communiqué envisaged interim arrangements.
Those interim arrangements involve the use of the existing CrimTrac database, which the COAG communiqué admitted would be less than ideal. For instance, the database might be able to allow a Victoria Police officer to determine whether an interstate intervention order exists between two individuals, but the database will not be able to let the officer see the particular conditions attached to that order. So in practice, when a VicPol officer is called to an alleged domestic violence incident and one of the people involved in that incident alleges there is an interstate order in place, it may be practically impossible for the officer to determine whether the alleged offender is in breach of the order. For this reason it seems the Victorian government and most other states and territories have decided to delay the operation of the national recognition scheme, but the Victorian government has cited its concerns about the workability of the database to depart from the model laws adopted by COAG.
This bill departs from the COAG laws, as I understand it, in two ways. Firstly, this bill would authorise a police officer to issue a family violence safety notice, regardless of whether an interstate domestic violence order is in place; and secondly, this bill would ensure that such a safety notice would prevail over an interstate order where it is not possible for the respondent to comply with both the notice and the order. It seems to me that this departure largely gets around the problem.
If a VicPol officer attends a family violence incident, the officer can issue a safety notice, which is a very short-term instrument that protects the victim for no longer than 72 hours or until an application for a family violence intervention order can be made to a court. This 72-hour period would then allow the officer to go back to the station and make an interstate call to determine what the conditions of the interstate order are and therefore whether the order has been breached. If the order has in fact been breached, the officer would issue appropriate charges. Given this is a very sensible departure from the model laws, which the government has explained is necessary to address the limitations of the interim period before the national database is built, we just cannot see why this bill would not give a commencement date.
The department has explained that there are a number of very onerous tasks which need to be performed before the national scheme becomes operational. Those tasks include training police officers, Magistrates Court staff and other things of that nature, but surely these are tasks which need to be undertaken before almost any bill that is passed by this chamber comes into effect. Whenever Parliament changes a law, there is a likelihood that government departments, agencies and indeed industries and businesses need to adapt. This can take time, so Parliament often sets a commencement date for legislation that is months or occasionally years into the future. This is usually done in collaboration with the affected departments, agencies, businesses and industries. But the point is that Parliament does ultimately set a commencement date, which effectively then becomes a deadline towards which adaptive efforts are directed.
I cannot see that the need to retrain police, magistrates and court staff is a valid reason as to why there is no commencement date to this legislation. I also cannot see that the concerns around the workability of the interim arrangements are valid reasons, given that those concerns were referred to in the COAG communiqué and given that the government has departed from the model laws in order to address those concerns. Now, just because I cannot see the reasons does not mean there are no valid reasons, but it simply does mean that the government has not explained them properly. I do understand that the New South Wales Parliament did not include a commencement date in their own legislation either when it passed it earlier this year, but I also note that some non-government members, including members of the Labor opposition up there, expressed concern about the lack of a commencement date.
Was the decision not to include a commencement date in enabling the legislation part of the COAG agreement, or was this a decision of the Victorian government that came about completely independently?
I think it is incumbent on the government to explain in more detail than it has given so far why there is no commencement date, and I would greatly appreciate it if the minister could offer this information in summing up today. Perhaps it might also be beneficial, especially in the absence of a commencement date, for the government to give some indication as to its expected time line for when the national scheme will commence.
This is an extremely important piece of legislation — one of the most important and significant pieces of legislation, I think, that this Parliament will consider. A national recognition scheme for family violence intervention orders has been a long time coming. It has been five-year since COAG began its first work on a national scheme, and it has been a full six years since the Australian and New South Wales law reform commissions jointly reported on the issue, in 2010, but because there is no commencement date we in the Greens are concerned that we still will not be seeing a national recognition scheme for some time.
I understand that the lack of a commencement date is not uncommon in some types of bills, but the big difference here is that people are dying, and overwhelmingly they are women. Across the country more than one woman is killed every week by her partner or former partner. This year 54 women have already lost their lives, and it is only October. The longer we delay on preventative action, the more women will die. Intervention orders are a vital part of the protective framework for women who experience family violence. While we delay the implementation of a national scheme the situation simply will not change for those people who cross state and territory boundaries. Given what we know now, it is very difficult to understand why we in Victoria and the other jurisdictions would not be all systems go on a national scheme.
Of course our powers as policymakers and legislators are limited in this area. We may never be able to prevent every single death and every single incident of family violence, but where we can improve preventative measures we absolutely should, and without delay. It is incumbent on all of us to ensure that we are doing everything we can to keep people safe from the scourge of family violence