Hansard debates

Vicki WARD (Eltham – Minister for Prevention of Family Violence, Minister for Employment) (15:04): I also rise in support of this bill. Strangulation can cause unconsciousness within seconds, and it can cause death within minutes. What can start as a threat can quickly become a fatal form of violence. Non-fatal strangulation can cause blood clots, it can cause stroke and it can cause brain damage. It is an in especially insidious and dangerous form of family violence experienced by up to 68 per cent of victim-survivors. It is terrifying. I cannot imagine the fear that you would have when someone’s hands are around your throat trying to cut off your airways while you try and work out how to survive. It is a form of abuse that is rarely an isolated incident, and it is often used by perpetrators as part of an ongoing and escalating pattern of coercion and control. ‘Do what I say or I will do this to you again, and you don’t know how far I will go’ – that is the hideous threat that is implied within non-fatal strangulation.

This year, as we have heard from previous speakers, 47 women have been murdered by a perpetrator of family violence. That is more than one a week. The terrible thing is that the year is not over yet, so we are really saying so far, 47 women have been murdered – so far. It is terrible. It is absolutely terrible that this is still occurring in our communities across our country. We have had seven women murdered in the last month. Actually, I will rephrase that – someone has murdered seven women in the last month – because we do need to reframe part of the language and the way that we frame the way that we talk about family violence. We talk a lot about the victim-survivors, and we need to, but we really need to talk about the perpetrators. We need to talk about the people who are using violence and their actions, what they do, because they are the ones that create this, not the victim-survivors.

One in four women have experienced intimate partner violence since the age of 15. If we look around at the women in this place, you will know that there are women who are sitting here who have experienced family violence. That is around 2.5 million women across our nation. Let us try to pack that into Melbourne, for example. If we were to condense that national figure into Melbourne, that would be that every female in the city of Melbourne, Greater Melbourne, has experienced family violence. It is 2.5 million across the nation, but imagine that every woman you see in Melbourne has experienced family violence. That is what our national statistic is.

Around 800,000 people present each year nationally to our hospitals with injuries caused from family violence. That is just those who actually let the hospital know that family violence is the cause of their injury, so we know that that number is far greater. That is a lot of people presenting to hospital every day, and as we heard from the member for Gippsland South, phone calls are going out to Victoria Police around every 6 minutes. Over 92,000 calls were made to police last year, and in every single one of those calls the cause for those calls, the perpetrator, was a male. Now, we know that men are not the sole actors in family violence, and we know that women are not the only victims. We know that it happens in rainbow families. We know it happens in intergenerational families. But we do know that overwhelmingly family violence is perpetrated by men, it is gender-based and it is directed at women.

I would encourage everybody in this place to come along to the Walk against Family Violence on 24 November. I would encourage everybody in this place to sign the banner that was here with Respect Victoria a fortnight ago, which has been signed by a number of people in this chamber, but there are quite a few people in this chamber who have still not signed it.

Women are predominantly those targeted because of their gender, but we know that family violence will continue to happen until we have equality. We are not there yet, but I can tell you that this government has worked incredibly hard to get us to a point where we can say that there is no more family violence. We must bring about change. Imagine what our society could do, what we could achieve, without family violence. The introduction of standalone non-fatal strangulation legislation is an important step in protecting victim-survivors by introducing penalties that recognise the seriousness of this conduct and hold perpetrators to account, because they need to be held to account. They need to understand what they are doing is wrong, it is illegal and the government, the law and the state of Victoria will not stand for it. This bill delivers on the Allan Labor government’s commitments included in 2023–27 gender equality strategy and action plan. I commend the Minister for Women along with her office and her department for this work and the amount of energy and time and consideration that has been put into it.

This is the product of complex work, this legislation that we are debating today. Time has been taken to ensure that the targets of the sort of high-risk family violence offending intended to be captured are captured in a simple and effective way. It is also important that the legislation works effectively with other key reforms such as the adoption of the affirmative consent model. We want to ensure that the responsibility for offending is placed onto perpetrators rather than victim-survivors. It builds on the work of our royal commission – we have implemented all 227 recommendations. We have opened up 18 Orange Doors and we have created opportunities for victim-survivors to be heard and to influence policy, because we do need to understand their experience. We need to understand what it is like to go through the system, what it is like to present yourself, what it is like to not get the support that you need and even what it is like to get the support that you need and how it can transform your life – the life you now have to rebuild because of the violence of somebody else.

The offences introduced by this bill will hold offenders to account. It will provide clearer indications to the police and community service practitioners of escalating violence and control in family violence situations. It opens up a new conversation. It helps people across the sector understand the seriousness of this violence. I cannot emphasise enough that it is not an end point. Once a perpetrator starts engaging with non-fatal strangulation, that is not the end; it does not stop there, it continues to escalate. There is a core cohort of offenders who commit family violence who will escalate their behaviour. They need to know that they will be stopped, and they need to be stopped as soon as they engage in this activity, as soon as they start using violence. This bill also aims to improve understanding of the dangers and potential lethality of non-fatal strangulation among police, courts and community service practitioners and help drive more effective medical, legal and law enforcement responses.

This bill at its core is about ensuring that there are more opportunities to prevent and de-escalate family violence situations, such as where non-fatal strangulation is being used to control, threaten, scare or intimidate, because that is what it is – it is about intimidation, it is about control, it is about power. This is why for the more serious of these two offences, where injury has occurred, consent will not be available as a defence. Currently, non-fatal strangulation is recognised under the multi-agency risk assessment management – MARAM – framework as a serious family violence risk factor associated with an increased likelihood of serious injury or death for victim-survivors. As I said, it is an indication of escalation. It is a behaviour that we cannot tolerate. It is a violence that we cannot tolerate. It is a violence that we have to stamp out.

The 10-year offence that this legislation introduces is designed to capture instances where the offender intentionally injures their victim with an act of non-fatal strangulation. The element of intentional injury means that there is a higher level of culpability attached to this offence. We know you meant to hurt, we know you meant to inflict pain, and you will receive punishment for this. There will be repercussions. You will be held accountable. You will be held responsible. Existing common law and statutory defences such as self-defence, duress or sudden and extraordinary circumstances will be available for both the five-year and the 10-year offences. The risks of non-fatal strangulation have not always been widely understood by those who encounter victim-survivors and offenders, contributing to low detection and prosecution rates. This is the reason why this legislation is so important and why I support it.