Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Community Safety, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this very important statement on ending gender based violence. The sad reality is, when you look at the figures for family violence—and it sounds awful to use the words 'family violence'—they are going up all the time. But in some ways things have changed. I go back to my time in the Victorian police force. A lot of times, when I was at Boronia criminal investigations branch, there would a violent domestic and, sadly, it was always the woman who would end up being badly beaten, in some cases raped. It was all about control. I remember one time in particular, one of the saddest cases we had, where a lady was badly, badly beaten. We put the brief together to go into the County Court to charge the husband. Then she came in a month later to withdraw the charges against him. In the background, the husband was just kind of giving us a wink. That's what happened in those days. The police wouldn't actually push a case unless we had a victim. When it comes to family violence, it has changed for the better over time, and the courts actually take action on what the police present, even though you can have a reluctant victim.

I will just talk about the La Trobe stats. Sadly, La Trobe, in the south-east of Victoria, hit the media for the wrong reasons recently, when it came to Cardinia Shire crime stats. The family violence rate is up 7.3 per cent compared to the previous year. Amazingly, 1,669 incidents were recorded up to March 2024. The government promised an additional 500 frontline workers, and they were meant to have delivered 352 of the 500 workers by now. The government haven't met that target. They must meet that target, but 136 is all they have at the moment.

Community legal centres are so important. I've had a lot of dealings with the Narre Warren community legal service and I know the support they provide to women. I want to really focus on migrant women, because that's the No. 1 issue when it comes to my office, and I'm also the shadow minister for multicultural affairs. I will talk about an incident that happened not long ago. The Victoria Police do a fantastic job. They arrested a person who was threatening to have his wife deported back to another country—I won't say the country. She had the courage to call Victoria Police. They came and arrested him, and my office have been dealing with this lady. We found out what he had actually been doing, and this is something I've written to the Victorian chief commissioner about.

We find, when it comes to multicultural communities, that if a person hasn't been in Australia for a number of years, they don't understand the court process. In this case, the person had been here for a number of years, but she had no idea. She had been totally isolated by the husband. When it came to her permanent residency, the husband would get all the emails from Immigration but never applied for permanent residency and wouldn't allow her to get a drivers licence. He said, 'You don't need to work.' If she went out anywhere, she'd be bombarded by SMSs and calls asking, 'Where are you?' It was what we call coercive control. When the police took the offender, the husband, to court, he was locked up for two weeks.

The problem was, when it came to the victim, she didn't have any understanding of the court process at all. She thought she had to get a legal representative to take her husband to court and defend herself. That's when we had to go and explain what was occurring. I've suggested to Victoria Police that they take a proactive stance when it comes to court proceedings. I've made two points. In cases of breaches of intervention orders, it is important for the victims to understand that the police act as the prosecutor. It's not a requirement for the victim to actually get a lawyer. The aggrieved member does not necessarily need to engage a lawyer. And it would be prudent for the police to maintain regular contact with victims, perhaps every two weeks. While this may be time consuming, it would provide much-needed support to the victims, who often feel isolated. So I'm looking forward to Victoria Police's response to this issue.

It is a big issue. Family and domestic violence does not just affect one community group; it affects the entire country. It doesn't matter where you were born, Australia or overseas; family violence is absolutely devastating, particularly the murders. One in four women have experienced family violence by an intimate partner from the age of 15, which is an absolute tragedy. When it comes to murders, what has taken place over the years has been absolutely horrific. I think one woman gets murdered every six days. When I spoke previously to the homicide squad in Victoria, I asked if there was a common denominator when it comes to these murders. They said that it is all about control and winning the argument—that the offender is not thinking about jail or consequences; they just must win it at all costs. This is an absolutely awful situation.

I seek leave to table the letter to the Victorian chief commissioner of police, which I mentioned earlier.

Leave granted.

When it comes to our plan, something that the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has been very passionate about is doubling the size of the Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation. Child exploitation is such a tragic thing. Again, to go back to my days in the police force, every Monday morning, as a detective, you'd come in to the Boronia criminal investigations branch, and sadly there would be a young person, usually female, who had been abused over the weekend at a sleepover.

The other thing I'm very passionate about is a national child sex disclosure scheme. We did research with Dr Rick Brown from the Australian Institute of Criminology, where we found out that when it comes to recidivist offenders—and I think 1,700 had actually reoffended—those they targeted were, on average, 11-year-old girls. The most interesting and saddest fact was that when a recidivist offender commits their crime it's normally within the timespan of, say, 10 years, during which time the victims may have grown up or the offender has gone interstate and goes to a new area, and then he would swap his target, from, say, male to female. It's predatory behaviour, as described to me by Dr Rick Brown. So that's something I'm very passionate about. I don't know why we still haven't got a national child sex offender register. That's something I'll continue to push hard for. It's so important to do.

Also, we on this side will be extending emergency payments to support women and children fleeing domestic violence, which we established back in 2021, and introducing tougher bail laws for Commonwealth offences.

To finish off, I want to speak about migrant women who may have come from a country where they don't trust law enforcement authorities and who may have language and cultural barriers, face isolation from families and support networks, and have a lack awareness of available services. It is very important for Home Affairs to make sure that when these women arrive in Australia they are provided with this information.

Another thing this side wanted to do was to change the character test, so that if a person who is here on a visa commits family violence then their visa would be revoked and they would be deported. Sadly, the government didn't support that.

The other one I'm very keen on is what I call women's friendship cafes. I remember going to WASEMA, the Women's Association South East Melbourne Australia, where women would come together from multicultural communities to discuss issues of family violence and support. The other thing that is so important when it comes to coercive powers is that the husband will stop his wife from going to a cafe, a restaurant, a gym, or anything else but will allow her to go to the school to drop off the kids, and that's where these cafes are most effective in supporting women.

See this speech in context