Page 2829 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 11 October 2022
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and continues the government’s work to strengthen our response to and the prevention of sexual assault and sexual violence in our community.
Sexual violence is a serious problem of epidemic proportions in Australia. A survey by the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that one in five women have experienced sexual violence, while a study by the Australian Institute of Criminology found that, on average, a woman is killed by an intimate partner every 10 days. These are shocking and unacceptable figures.
As studies have shown, the impact of sexual violence ripples out across Australian families, communities and society and the effects of sexual violence are long-lasting, profound and detrimental, affecting a victim-survivor’s physical health, mental health, social wellbeing and relationships.
The supports and responses available to victim-survivors must be adequate to address this impact. The Listen. Take Action to Prevent, Believe and Heal report—the report—outlined that many victim-survivors feel that, too often, the response by community, government agencies and the justice system in the ACT fails to meet survivors’ needs for healing and justice and can be re-traumatising rather than supportive.
The reforms recommended by the report are wideranging and cover multiple facets of the ACT specialist response and the justice system. The recommendations will benefit from implementation in phases, over an extended period of time, so that we can observe the impact of the reforms, continually review and make adjustments as required to give effect to the intent of the reforms.
The Sexual Assault Reform Legislation Amendment Bill being introduced today will be the first tranche of a phased law reform program to implement the report law reform recommendations. The bill implements five important recommendations of the report and corrects two unintended consequences arising from the Crimes (Consent) Amendment Act 2022.
The bill introduces amendments that respond to changes in social and cultural norms about sexual violence, and that reflect the severity of sexual violence offences and the harm caused to victim-survivors of sexual violence. It seeks to support victim-survivors and the general community to feel safe about their participation, and be safe when participating, in a more trauma-informed criminal justice system.
The bill also clarifies common-law positions of context evidence in legislation, brings about better consistency across a range of ACT legislation and makes amendments to further clarify expectations of consensual sexual activity, following recent amendments to ACT consent laws. It seeks to promote consistent and clear treatment under the law to improve victim-survivors’ engagement with the administration of justice and access to justice.
Specifically, the bill amends ACT laws to explicitly provide that evidence of prior family violence between parties may be admissible in sexual offence proceedings. It provides that the presumption of bail does not apply to offences in sections 55(2), 55A and 56 of the Crimes Act 1900. It omits section 80D of the Evidence
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