Bail (Conditions) Amendment Bill
Tuesday 30 April 2024
Ms CLANCY (Elder) (15:49): Mr Speaker, congratulations on the new gig. I rise today in support of the Bail (Conditions) Amendment Bill 2023 to amend the Bail Act 1985 by introducing mandatory bail conditions for a person charged with an offence of contravening an intervention order where the breach involves violence or a threat of violence. This bill seeks to deliver on our election commitment to require those who have been charged with serious domestic violence offences to be electronically monitored as a condition of bail, should it be granted.
In this place, on the steps of our parliament, in our workplaces and classrooms and on television, radio and social media, we hear and see time and time again the crisis that is domestic and family violence. When we talk about domestic and family violence, the focus is so often on the women and children who bear the brunt of this violence, physically, emotionally and financially. It is the women and children who bear the cost of moving and losing their homes and often their employment, and it is the women who must prove violence in court and fight for their children to remain in their care and not with their abuser.
While we must continue to shine a light on these experiences, it is imperative, if we truly want to see an end to domestic and family violence, that we also have the difficult conversations about who perpetuates this violence. The overwhelming majority of perpetrators of domestic, family and sexual violence are men. More than 80 per cent of violent crimes, and an even higher percentage of sexual offences, are committed by men. Around 95 per cent of all victims of violence of any gender experience violence from a male perpetrator.
We can and we must acknowledge that men can and will also be victims of domestic violence, but for even those men who are victims, the majority of their perpetrators are also men. In 2020, more than 58 per cent of the 81,000 women and girls globally who were killed died at the hands of an intimate partner or a family member. That is one woman or girl killed every 11 minutes. In Australia, a woman is killed on average every nine days by a current or former partner, a current or former partner who once made them feel safe and made them feel loved, someone who they once trusted.
These statistics are disgusting and shameful, and if they make you want to rebut, 'Well, what about the men who are victims of domestic and family violence, too?' then you are simply not listening and you are not interested in ending this violence. We can talk about the men who are victims of or who survive this violence, but it cannot be only in reaction to or at the expense of the overwhelming majority, the women who are subjected to this violence from men.
South Australians are rightly proud of being the first place in the world where women successfully fought for the right to vote and to stand for parliament. While many advancements have been made towards gender equality, we still have so far to go. The bill before us today is another step in the right direction towards achieving gender equality. These amendments would subject those who have breached a domestic violence related intervention order by either committing or threatening a violent act to much more stringent conditions if bail were to be granted.
Both home detention and electronic tracking would be mandatory in these cases, with the defendant being forbidden to leave their home unless it is for specific reasons such as travelling to work or seeking medical assistance. With electronic monitoring and geographical bail restrictions, real-time alerts can be provided if a defendant breaches their home detention conditions.
These defendants are already prescribed under the Bail Act 1985 and must already demonstrate special circumstances to be granted bail. The most recent court data shows that half of defendants charged with violently breaching a domestic abuse related intervention order are granted some form of bail. Evidence shows that the risk of reoffending in cases of domestic and family violence is high immediately after a relationship breakdown. This time often coincides with the defendant being newly charged with a criminal offence and on bail.
The amendments included in this bill would take action to address perpetrator behaviour during this time, to prevent domestic and family violence and provide safety for victim survivors. The successful passage of this bill would empower courageous victim survivors to more readily go about attending work and engaging in other aspects of community life, helping them to feel and to be safer.
As we continue to move beyond the COVID-19 pandemic, a crisis which disproportionately affected women, we must have a clear plan to promote gender equality and end domestic and family violence at all levels of government. Labor is committed to addressing gender inequality, and empowering women and girls to equally participate in our homes, our schools, our workplaces, our parliaments, and in every single aspect of our economy and community life. We want, and we need, to create a state in which your gender has no bearing on the opportunities available to you or on your safety.
The Malinauskas Labor government has made significant progress toward this commitment in our two years of government. In addition to this bill, we have:
announced a Royal Commission into Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence, of which we have published the terms of reference and appointed Natasha Stott Despoja as its commissioner;
made the experience of domestic violence a ground of discrimination in the Equal Opportunity Act;
enshrined 15 days' paid domestic violence leave for workers engaged in the state industrial system;
committed $1 million to establish southern and northern domestic violence prevention and recovery hubs; and
provided $800,000 to restore funding to the Women's Domestic Violence Court Assistance Service for the next four years, and that is in addition to reinstating the funding to Catherine House, which was cut by the former government.
While we are proud of this work, we still have a way to go until every woman can go to work, school, TAFE, uni, catch-ups with loved ones, or for them to even stay home, without the risk of violence perpetrated by men.
In closing, I would like to thank a couple of my favourite people—the Minister for Women and the Prevention of Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence and the Attorney-General—and both their teams for their work in bringing this reform to this place. I want to thank them for their ongoing efforts to deliver on our election commitments to promote gender equality and end domestic and family violence. I commend the bill to the house.
