Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to support the introduction of the Crimes Amendment (Strengthening the Criminal Justice Response to Sexual Violence) Bill 2024. There is no doubt that the criminal justice process is distressing and traumatising for victims-survivors. From the very outset, it is a process that is challenging for victims-survivors to trust, especially given the common and unfortunately largely accurate perception that the criminal justice system is ineffective at prosecuting sexual offences. Even if a person feels able to report the offences committed against them, that is just the start of a process that will often serve to compound the trauma of the original assault. The adversarial justice system; the nature of the offences, which are often committed in private, where victims-survivors are the only witness; and the intractable, sexist perceptions of victims-survivors throughout our society—each of these factors makes seeking a conviction uniquely challenging in sexual violence matters.

So what might the current process look like in practice? Initially, a victim may almost certainly fear that they will not be believed by police when reporting a crime. They may well feel embarrassed and humiliated by having to share intimate sexual details with lawyers and the police. Then, if the case does proceed to court, they will face an examination-in-chief in which they will have to retell traumatising details of the salt. They may well then face a gruelling cross-examination in which their honesty and their reputation are challenged or in which they are confronted with aggressive tactics designed to intimidate and confuse. They may fear retribution from the perpetrator while the trauma of the trial is ongoing. They may be worried that they will be shamed in front of friends or their family.

The fact is that victim-survivors face different challenges in the court that severely complicate their access to justice. Their needs are different from victims of other crimes in that the harms of continuing a prosecution may substantially outweigh the potential for a conviction. As a society, we must do what we can to eliminate or at least minimise the traumatising impact of our legal processes on victim-survivors. We must always keep them front of mind.

To that end, I commend the government's efforts to improve the experience of victims and survivors of sexual violence by asking the Australian Law Reform Commission, the ALRC, to lead an inquiry into how our justice system responds to and deals with sexual violence. The creation of an expert advisory group is also a welcome development. This will help ensure that the lived experiences of victims and survivors will inform the ALRC's work. Hopefully, this group will also inform the final recommendations.

But it is with sadness and frustration that I note that there are still outstanding recommendations from the 2017 final report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. That five-year inquiry produced a 17-volume report with over 400 recommendations at a cost of nearly $350 million. It highlighted the failings of our institutions to keep our children safe and the culture of secrecy and cover-up that was allowed to persist for decades. It exposed the devastating and persisting effects that child sexual abuse can have throughout the lifetime of an affected individual.

So why is it that we are still in the process of implementing those recommendations more than six years later? As a relatively new member of parliament, I am constantly shocked and dismayed by the number of recommendations made by experts through numerous inquiries, from royal commissions down, which are never acted upon. We know what to do. The experts have told us what to do. We just need to do it. So I trust that, when the government receives the report from the ALRC in 12 months, it will seek to promptly and thoroughly implement the recommendations.

Today's bill is not just about protecting vulnerable victim-survivors. It does take a step towards that, but it is also about achieving just outcomes. The enhanced protections in the bill include making evidence about sexual reputation inadmissible for all victims and survivors of child sexual abuse and placing greater restrictions upon evidence relating to a person's sexual experience. This kind of evidence can be traumatic to victims to give and is often a vehicle for victim blaming. The bill also includes the introduction of evidence-recording hearings and permitting the recordings to be used in subsequent trials and retrials. It's very important that victim-survivors are no longer to be forced to go through these processes again and again. It's also important that the bill includes a clause such that the victims will not be required to see the accused at the time these recordings are made.

The bill clarifies that victim-survivors are free to publish self-identifying information or to give their informed consent to others to publish that information if they so wish. It's important because each of these protections will go some way towards minimising the harms associated with the prosecution of sexual violence. We still have a long way to go. I take this opportunity to thank the numerous organisations that consulted with the government about this important bill, and I note that, in the main, they are supportive of the changes that it introduces.

I commend the bill to the House.

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