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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-07-04 Daily Xml
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Domestic Violence Disclosure Scheme

Mr ODENWALDER (Elizabeth) (15:32): I rise to make a surprise addition to this grievance debate, and I am very pleased to have the opportunity to do so. I was very pleased today to hear in question time, in response to a question from the member for Elder, the Attorney-General go through some of the detail about the introduction of a domestic violence disclosure scheme.

As members will know, this is something I have been proposing for quite a fair while in this place. Several years ago, I caught the attention of the then premier and set the wheels in motion for a very comprehensive discussion paper around responses to domestic violence and, ultimately, a trial of the domestic violence disclosure scheme, beginning in October.

As people know, this idea was first mooted in the United Kingdom in response to the death of a young woman at the hands of someone she met online. There were concerns from her family that were not heeded, particularly by the police. There were no grounds, as far as the police could see, quite rightly at the time, to release information about this person. The rest is history, and the young woman ended up dead at the hands of this person who had an extensive history of violence against women, and violence generally, and had served extensive gaol time. It was a situation that may well have been avoided had such a scheme been in place.

The evolution of that idea, which first came to my attention when I was in the UK, went through various incarnations in Scotland, then Wales and most recently in New South Wales, where a trial in three separate police districts yielded some pretty good results, as the Attorney-General alluded to, so I am really pleased that finally the scheme is being trialled and that it is being trialled on a statewide basis.

Although New South Wales is a larger jurisdiction, the trial was in fact a smaller trial by virtue of it being only three districts. In order to get a fair idea of how well these things work, and to have it functioning correctly, I would argue that it needs to have a fairly wide scope, that ultimately these schemes would be interconnected throughout the states and that information sharing throughout the states would be streamlined to such an extent that these schemes could work in a very streamlined way. That is yet to be seen, of course.

I have had some informal discussions with some SAPOL members who have been working towards the implementation of this scheme. I had another tour of the MAPS (Multi-Agency Protection Service) facility just last week and spoke at length about the implementation of the domestic violence disclosure scheme and how MAPS might help. MAPS are doing an amazing job. I can only hope that, pursuant to the election promise not to touch front-line police services, etc., in the 1.7 per cent efficiency dividends, MAPS is included. MAPS needs to be expanded, if anything. It certainly does not need to be the victim of the cuts that are coming inevitably to the Public Service.

I congratulate the Attorney-General on finally bringing something together. I initially thought it was the responsibility of the police minister, but clearly it has gone to safer hands and the Attorney-General will be guiding this through. I wish the trial every success. I hope that it can be properly funded in this year's budget and in further budgets, as well as MAPS and the services it provides generally. I congratulate the Attorney-General and the government on their domestic violence disclosure scheme.

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