Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Temporary Chairman, you will see that we have an identical amendment. We are deeply concerned about the impact and the combination of not only this amendment but other amendments within this bill. I agree with Senator Stott Despoja that what will happen is that incidences will not be recorded. It will potentially be harder for people to substantiate incidences of family or domestic violence.

There is a substantial body of evidence that indicates the problem with domestic violence. I am extremely distressed, I might say, that not during the debate in here but during the wider public debate there have been a lot of claims made that try to diminish the occurrence and the incidence of domestic violence. I had thought that over recent years we have been making progress, gradually, on domestic violence and I think this has substantially set back the issues of domestic violence and actually exposing it in the family. In the report the Greens disagreed with the majority view of the committee.

The committee did express concerns about the issues around domestic violence. We are aware that there is a study ongoing and we believe it is most appropriate that we leave the existing definition of family violence until at least this study is done so that we have some new research that indicates the potential impact on domestic violence. There have been a number of, I think, flawed analyses of the impact of domestic violence that downplay it. As I said, the combination of this definition and a number of other provisions, particularly the issues over false allegations, and we will come to that, will seriously discourage women—and, let us be plain, in this instance we are talking about women—from bringing this issue up. They will be subjected then to compulsory mediation where they will not be able to express themselves adequately. They will be in situations where they are extremely distressed and in fear. I think this definition will significantly add to that provision.

There is no evidence that substantiates that women make false allegations nor is there evidence that where claims of domestic violence are substantiated that affects the contact outcome. The evidence does not exist for that, so I am a bit bewildered as to why so much effort has been put into trying to downplay the issue of domestic violence. That is what I believe is happening. We should be actually dealing with it in a full and frank manner and exposing it, and not leading to situations where women are going to be in fear and will feel like they cannot bring up this issue and adequately address it. We believe that the definition of domestic violence at this stage should stand as it currently is. If the studies show that there is a need to further define or redefine it, then that comes back after the studies in progress have been done. We support the Democrat amendment, as it is the same as our amendment.