Bills

Statutes Amendment (Electronic Monitoring of Domestic Violence Offenders) Bill

Introduction and First Reading

Ms HILDYARD (Reynell) (10:32): Obtained leave and introduced a bill for an act to amend the Bail Act 1985 and the Intervention Orders (Prevention of Abuse) Act 2009. Read a first time.

Second Reading

Ms HILDYARD (Reynell) (10:33): I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I rise today to introduce the Statutes Amendment (Electronic Monitoring of Domestic Violence Offenders) Bill 2021. In essence, it is a bill to enable authorities to electronically monitor those who stand accused of serious domestic violence offences and who have been placed on bail by the courts. It is a reform that is sadly needed because there are some in our community who continue to fail to understand that violence against women and children is never an option and who, despite numerous cautions, continue to harass, intimidate and assault former partners.

As I have said in this place before, and in numerous other speeches, forums, meetings, workshops, rallies, gatherings outside of this place, and community events, this is the type of bill I wish we did not have to introduce but, unfortunately, it is desperately needed. There are also words in this speech today that I feel I have uttered a million times, way too many times, words that I wish were no longer needed. But, as I have also said in this place and indeed in many other forums on many occasions, every single one of us in this place has a deep responsibility to do whatever is within our power to speak up, to act, for as long as is needed to prevent and end the horrific scourge of domestic violence and abuse towards women to ensure that there is not one more.

It is a responsibility that I take deeply seriously. It is a responsibility that I know many others in this place take seriously, and it is a responsibility that so many of those extraordinary workers who work in domestic violence crisis accommodation, in legal services, in advocacy organisations and groups in our community and in the media take very, very seriously. And take it seriously we must, because the scourge continues unabated, as does the gender inequality at the core of disrespect, abuse and violence towards women. Women continue to be disrespected, harassed, controlled, assaulted and, tragically, they continue to die at the hands of partners or former partners, as do children.

As I spoke about just a few short weeks ago when introducing another bill that lies waiting to be debated on our Notice Paper, a bill to include the experience of domestic violence as a ground for discrimination in the Equal Opportunity Act, the recent horrific, tragic murder of baby Kobi by her father, the person whose fundamental role was to protect her and to keep her safe and free from harm and abuse, shocked and devastated our community. Following her murder, we witnessed an outpouring of love and support for her mother and all who loved her. I say again: may they have strength in the horrendous weeks, months and years ahead as they contemplate their journey ahead without baby Kobi, and may baby Kobi rest in peace.

The reports of women assaulted, controlled, subjected to psychological and other forms of abuse continue apace, and the reports of women trapped at home with their abusers during periods of COVID lockdown are truly frightening. The New South Wales Women's Safety CEO, Hayley Foster, who has worked in domestic violence support for 15 years, said:

2020 will be remembered as the worst year for domestic violence that any of us…in the sector now have ever experienced…[with] so many more strangulation cases…threats to kill…more serious head injuries, and sexual assaults…

Shocking—as are the statistics in last year's SAPOL report, which outlined that there had been a 19 per cent increase in domestic violence crimes relating to property and a 7 per cent increase in domestic violence crimes relating to persons.

I continue to have women attend my office scared, worried, frustrated and desperately wanting to live their lives without fear, for the abuse, the violence and the control to cease, and wanting accessible and meaningful choices to change and rebuild their lives. In conversations with these women, a theme often emerges, a theme that informs us of a deep frustration with the efficacy of intervention orders when a perpetrator is determined to continue to wreak fear and havoc in a woman's life.

Too many times I have been told by women that it has been a long and difficult journey to secure an intervention order and that when they finally have 'he just ignores the intervention order' or 'by the time I can report a breach, he has left and then lies about where he has been'. For the sake of these women, we have to do better.

As I have also spoken about in this place many times before, we must also do better in terms of stopping violence before it starts. We desperately need a huge injection of funding into domestic violence prevention and early intervention. It is a need that I spoke about at length in this place when more than 3,300 petitions were tabled on behalf of members of our southern community who are campaigning for a funded domestic violence prevention hub in the south. As I said that day, campaign they must because, despite the City of Onkaparinga region being the largest council area in South Australia, there are no funded prevention services whatsoever to support women experiencing domestic violence.

Our community is an incredibly strong and resilient one in which people look out for each other, look after each other and collaborate with compassion and determination. Our community's strength and compassion is formidable, but without targeted funding for prevention services it is difficult to make a difference because women at risk of violence need the earliest possible access to therapy, counselling and other services to keep them safe.

They need more preventative services and community education, as well as clear pathways into appropriate services, because current support for women experiencing domestic violence in the south, and indeed sadly in so many other places, is through a system focused on acute crisis and because the lack of appropriate prevention services to support women in the south experiencing domestic violence is appalling and because every one of us is sick and tired of calling and scrambling around desperately trying to find somewhere to send women when they most need support before they are harmed.

I have searched the budget papers for any clear commitment to a funded southern domestic violence prevention hub and, sadly, I cannot locate such a commitment. The budget papers identify domestic violence programs broadly, but it is unclear what those programs are. It also states that there has been work to support the existing hubs and there will be work to continue to support the establishment of safety hubs, but again it is unclear about what funding may be provided to enable those hubs to flourish in the way that happens when something is adequately resourced and coupled with that community strength and willingness to make change.

Unfortunately, the minister identified during last year's estimates hearings that there is no ongoing funding to support these hubs, leaving outstanding yet stretched domestic violence and other workers trying to do their existing work to make these hubs work. Women experiencing domestic violence, and indeed our communities in their entireties, deserve better. They need better. They matter. Their safety matters. Prevention of violence towards them matters and funding for that prevention matters and is desperately needed.

So, much more must be done on prevention and our voices will continue to be collectively raised to ensure that more is indeed done. I know that all who have been engaged with Southern Women Matter are tireless, courageous, formidable, relentless campaigners, a number of them with their own story of terrible domestic violence. They will not rest until this funding commitment is made and, crucially, until every woman is safe.

Whilst we continue to work towards ensuring that violence is prevented before it starts, we must engage every possible legislative measure to keep women safe. In preventing and ending domestic violence, we must simultaneously engage multiple strategies—legislative and programmatic—that are focused on prevention.

Sadly, more than ever the criminalising of coercive control and the raising of community and stakeholder awareness about this awful, insidious form of domestic abuse is urgently required, which is why I have also moved that bill. Eliminating coercive behaviour that is designed to intimidate, harm and control women is one of the next frontiers in ending this scourge. The bill to include domestic violence as a ground of discrimination in the Equal Opportunity Act, which I mentioned earlier, is a crucial step in ensuring the financial and job security of women who have experienced domestic violence by providing them with recourse, with an avenue to complain and to seek redress, and above all else to be heard.

Today, with the commitment that Labor has and my own commitment and deep sense of responsibility I feel to attempt to progress every piece of legislation and take every step we possibly can to keep South Australian women safer, I proudly introduce this bill that represents another step on the path that we must take to end violence against women.

This bill will require those who have been charged with serious domestic violence offences to be fitted with electronic monitoring devices as a condition of any bail granted to them. It is a bill with clear, simple steps that have been proven to make a difference, and any step that keeps any woman safer is one worth taking. It is one worth working through to also identify any other supports that need to sit around the bill and resulting legislation to ensure its efficacy.

In April this year, renowned journalist and multiple media award winner for her reporting on domestic violence and child protection Lauren Novak, whose commitment to preventing and ending domestic violence and ensuring 'not one more' I deeply admire and am grateful for, wrote about a study conducted by our state's Department for Correctional Services. The article states:

Between January 2017 and November 2018, corrections staff and academics tracked the movements of 394 men who had been released on bail after being charged with domestic violence crimes, such as assaulting their partner…

The article goes on to report:

Half the men (197) were monitored 24/7 via GPS-enabled ankle bracelets—

and that 27 in that group committed another offence compared to the other half without bracelets, amongst whom 64 men committed another offence—a 163 per cent increase.

Lauren's article went on to quote the wonderful Arman Abrahimzadeh, who said that the study 'speaks for itself', that authorities should 'definitely' consider making electronic monitoring the default option and that by doing so 'You’re sending the message that you’re holding perpetrators to account.' I seek leave to extend my time by 15 minutes.

Leave granted.

Ms HILDYARD: These are compelling words from a person who, together with his wonderful sisters and all at the Zahra Foundation following the most heartbreaking loss, works tirelessly to support and empower women who have experienced domestic violence to build new pathways and to ensure their financial independence and the opening up of new study and work opportunities. They know that:

Creating pathways for women into further education, training and employment is crucial to supporting women to break the cycle of violence and poverty in their lives.

They bring that aim of theirs to life every single day, and I thank them for what they do.

In 2018, Dr Heather Nancarrow and Ms Tanya Modini from the remarkable Australia's National Research Organisation for Women's Safety (ANROWS) wrote the 'Electronic monitoring in the context of domestic and family violence' report for the Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney-General. In that report, Dr Nancarrow and Ms Modini make several observations about the need for other supports and systems to operate alongside the use of an electronic device and speak about the fact that electronic monitoring is not a standalone mechanism. They also speak about the importance of considering the sort of domestic violence being perpetrated and the particular characteristics of a perpetrator and their determination to harm their former partner.

They conclude, however, that harms associated with domestic violence are preventable and electronic monitoring can contribute to reducing reoffending and enhancing safety for victims and survivors. They also conclude that most identified limitations are neither insurmountable nor reasons not to proceed with electronic monitoring in the context of domestic violence. Rather, they need to be considered and managed in the development and implementation of electronic monitoring.

They speak of the three main benefits of electronic monitoring in the criminal justice system generally and they list those three main benefits in their report as enhanced community safety, reduction in recidivism and reduced incarceration rates. Crucially, they refer to the perspectives of both victims and survivors, and defendants and offenders, in the literature and outline that victims and survivors of interpersonal violence report an increased sense of safety and also of independence when an electronic monitoring device is used.

Similarly, offenders report benefits from the structures associated with exclusion or inclusion zones, curfews and programs that can accompany electronic monitoring and the benefits that can come from maintaining family relationships. With consideration of these perspectives, the corrections department trial and this report, the excellent advice, as always, of parliamentary counsel, the experiences of women who live in fear and our desire to relentlessly bring to life our commitment to do whatever is possible to reduce the incidence of domestic violence, I bring this bill to the house.

The Statutes Amendment (Electronic Monitoring of Domestic Violence Offenders) Bill 2021 amends the Bail Act 1985 and the Intervention Orders (Prevention of Abuse) Act 2009. It amends the Bail Act by inserting a new section 2ae to require that an applicant for bail, who is a serious domestic violence suspect, must be subject, in the granting of bail, to a condition that they agree to be fitted with an electronic monitoring device of a kind approved by the chief executive. It further amends the Bail Act to include a definition of serious domestic violence offence suspects with reference to relevant provisions of the Criminal Law Consolidation Act and to an offence being aggravated when they behave in a particular way toward a partner or former partner.

The bill also amends the Intervention Orders (Prevention of Abuse) Act 2009 to ensure that a term is included in a prescribed intervention order so that, whilst the intervention order remains in force against the defendant, the defendant must be fitted with an electronic device of a kind approved by the chief executive for the purpose of monitoring the whereabouts of the defendant and that the defendant must comply with all reasonable directions of the chief executive in relation to the electronic monitoring device. It also amends this act to ensure the meaning of a serious domestic violence offence is clear.

This bill absolutely represents another step forward that we can take together as a parliament to prevent and end domestic violence. Together with the other bills that I have mentioned and Labor's bill to toughen penalties for breaches of domestic violence intervention orders, which recently passed this house, this bill can make a difference.

It can make a difference to the lives of those who live in the utmost, and often constant, fear of being harmed, or even killed, by a violent partner or former partner who is going through the legal process in relation to an alleged assault. It may even make a difference to the lives of the roughly 60 per cent of offenders, as shown in the South Australian trial, who reoffended, because they will be more closely monitored and will subsequently have to address their offending if they do not wish to lose bail and their freedom and connection with others should they be incarcerated.

In saying this, I draw members' attention again to the statistics revealed in the trial, statistics that spoke to a reduction in offences against women when those on bail were fitted with these electronic monitoring devices. I also point to the sense of security and the sense of safety that this measure can provide to women who for too long have lived in fear. As I articulated earlier, I wish that I no longer had to talk about domestic violence, but I do—we all do. We must all speak, and above all else we must all act, however we can, until there is not one more.

As has been the case with all the domestic violence measures I have introduced into this house, I introduce this bill with a determination to collaborate with all parliamentarians in this place, with the remarkable, extraordinary South Australian domestic violence organisations, workers within them and within the community sector, advocates, police, and members of the legal profession, and always—always—with those who have experienced or are experiencing domestic violence, to secure support for this bill, a bill that is another clear step in our collective efforts to ensure violence against women ends.

The devastating prevalence of domestic violence goes on and on relentlessly, seemingly unabated, across every corner of our state, harming too many children, too many women, too many families. Every time we speak of the relentless statistics, we are speaking of women and children all around us, in workplaces, in schools, in shopping centres, at sporting institutions, picking up kids from child care, literally everywhere.

I refuse to accept this, and I know that many of those opposite also refuse to accept this. I know, as sadly do so many others in our community, the lasting impact that domestic violence has: the fear, the shame, the embarrassment, the questioning of oneself. We cannot rest until no-one has to deal with this dreadful impact, until every woman is safe wherever she is, is never scared in her home, never feeling controlled or unheard but rather always experiencing the freedom that comes with deeply knowing that you are safe and that you have choices.

Every woman, every person deserves to feel that way, and this of course cannot be done properly until we address the underlying issue of disrespect for women and girls, which is at the very heart of gendered violence. In our schools, in our workplaces and in our homes we must not tolerate disrespect, abuse or violence against women and girls.

From snide and creepy remarks through to physical intimidation and assault, we must as a community call it out. We must do this because we know that that is where abuse and gendered violence start: with disrespect. As many in our community recount, not all disrespect towards women ends in violence, but all violence towards women begins with disrespect. Another crucial, important part of the conversation we are currently having around gendered violence as a community, as a nation, is to do with consent. While I will talk more broadly on this issue in the coming days, weeks and months, I will briefly touch on it in the context of this debate.

Many of the voices driving this conversation around consent to sexual activity and about what constitutes consent and assault are in fact high school students or those who have only recently finished their secondary education. Amongst them is courageous former Sydney school student Chanel Contos, who exposed the abuse and toxic culture among some students at Sydney's elite private schools and whose petition calling for earlier sex education in schools has empowered many school-age girls and young women subject to sexual abuse to stand up and tell their stories.

This is why it is so fundamental to get this right from an early age and it is why we urgently need an overhaul of laws and education relating to consent to sexual activity. Consent is about respect and it must be given affirmatively and enthusiastically. If we address these issues of respect, of gendered violence and of consent, we will not need to devise and construct more laws designed to impose harsher penalties on offenders who simply refuse to accept that violence is never an option and never a solution.

In the meantime, until we achieve gender equality in all areas of community life, this is indeed what I and others will do because nobody wants to mourn another woman, to see another family torn apart or to hear of women being intimidated and controlled to the point where they literally feel, as a number of women have directly said to me, like they are losing their mind to think that another child is living in fear and with shame. Let us take every single action that we possibly can to ensure that this is not the case.

This bill is real action. It has the potential to save lives. I wholeheartedly commend this bill to the house and wholeheartedly plead with those on the other side of this house to find their way to supporting it. Rather than thinking of reasons not to support it or to leave it languishing on the agenda for months, I plead with you to talk with me and to decide to progress this together as a parliament. This is a step our parliament can take. I invite you to take it forward together and, in doing so, to demonstrate to our community the priority that this parliament and everyone within it gives to ensuring that women are safe and that there is not one more.

Debate adjourned on motion of Dr Harvey.