Page 86 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 8 February 2022
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We need to instil that consent to a sexual act is free and voluntary; consent is not presumed. Every person has the right to choose not to participate in a sexual act. A consensual sexual act involves ongoing mutual communication and decision-making between the people participating. This is not complicated. In every other part of our lives, ongoing mutual communication and decision-making are 101 of how we function as a society. That is why it is critically important that our justice system and our laws convict people who actively perpetrate such deep violence, such trauma, on victims.
It is why I stand here so proud today to present this bill. I am passionate about seeing justice for survivors of sexual violence in our ACT community. But I have to acknowledge here that a criminal justice response is not what every victim/survivor wants. My desire is to see a system that allows for survivors to make informed choices, to be supported, to be believed and, if they do decide to take legal action, then to have a system and a law that will provide fair and just outcomes. This pervasive silence needs to end.
In the ACT we have been on this journey of law reform for at least the past four years. In 2018 Ms Caroline Le Couteur introduced an amendment bill to the Legislative Assembly. A subsequent inquiry was conducted by the justice and community safety committee. The key recommendations from the committee’s inquiry into the bill included that the ACT not consider or enact legislative change until the New South Wales Law Reform Commission inquiry into sexual offences was presented.
Further recommendations of the ACT committee’s inquiry included that a definition of consent be based on the concept of free and voluntary agreement, that affirmative and communicative consent be considered for enactment into ACT law and that legislative change retain the fundamental presumption of innocence until proven guilty.
In 2018 the ACT government provided their response to the bill, noting agreement to the inquiry’s recommendations, and also that there was a technical issue with the definition of consent as proposed and that there was a need for a substantial community education and awareness campaign.
Similarly to the ACT, New South Wales has been on a journey of sexual consent law reform since 2018. In May of that year the TV documentary Four Corners aired the very distressing story of Saxon Mullins and her lived experience of reporting sexual violence through the criminal justice system in New South Wales.
That same month, the Hon. Mark Speakman MP asked the New South Wales Law Reform Commission to conduct a review into consent in relation to sexual offences in New South Wales. That review culminated in a report presented to the New South Wales government in November 2020, followed by the government’s response, which gave support and in-principle support for all 44 recommendations. The New South Wales government recommended the introduction of an affirmative model of consent, and late last year those provisions were passed in both houses of parliament in New South Wales.
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