Page 2667 - Week 09 - Thursday, 16 September 2021
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This is essential, not only because the commonwealth plays an important role in the prevention of family and domestic violence, but also because family violence does not always occur within state and territory boundaries, and families experiencing violence may be spread across or move between different jurisdictions.
Being a smaller jurisdiction, the ACT has an opportunity to undertake important, in-depth, qualitative research into the experiences and nature of family violence in this city. While this is clearly a national crisis, the localised patterns of violence are essential to forming effective localised responses that make sense to our domestic violence crisis services, our justice system, our diverse communities and our survivors. This qualitative work will also be an essential part of forming a national picture by integrating our information with national qualitative datasets.
While the coronial process is designed to look at each individual case of death resulting from family violence, this legislation appoints a domestic and family violence review coordinator to look at all of these instances with a view to identifying patterns and areas, and reviewing further research and interventions. This is a very important step.
I also look forward to seeing what the Attorney-General’s current coronial reform process will lead to. I hope that it will deepen the coronial process, allowing for systemic analysis, as well as restorative processes for families to understand how their family member died.
It is an absolute tragedy that we must be having these conversations. However, it is a mark of a significant shift in the way that we view family and domestic violence that compels and allows us to be here today making these important changes.
I commend the minister for this important work, and I thank all of the public servants, domestic and family violence sector workers and advocates for their work in getting us to this position today. It is my sincere hope that this work will lead to important further evidence-based reform and interventions. I look forward to being able to advocate for that within this Assembly and supporting those reforms when they come before us.
I am incredibly grateful for this government’s ongoing commitment to reform in this space. I would like to publicly put on record and acknowledge my gratitude to the minister for her welcoming inclusion of my voice and my perspective in the government’s ongoing sexual assault response and prevention task force work. It is another very important part of the reform work that is necessary in this jurisdiction to ensure an end to gendered violence.
Domestic and family violence absolutely is a systemic issue, and it is our responsibility to ensure that we treat it as such.
MS LEE (Kurrajong—Leader of the Opposition) (5.52): As Mrs Jones pointed out, the Canberra Liberals welcome this Domestic Violence Agencies Amendment Bill, and will be supporting it today. The ACT in many ways has strived to be a nation
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