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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 8 Hansard (26 June) . . Page.. 2135 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

amend extensively these proposals in order to, as it were, bring in the national proposal slightly early. It is possible, of course, that when the national agreement is finally reached and provisions are dealt with they will be different from the ones that we are enacting today. That could happen in the course, easily, of the next 12 months, necessitating us to come back and amend these provisions further.

However, I am confident that provisions something like what has been put forward will be adopted nationally. Indeed, they are already in place in many respects in other jurisdictions. Therefore, I think we are not doing great harm to the principle by advancing the legislation at this point in time.

MS REILLY (11.02): I rise to speak in support of the amendments that have been put forward, and I do not think I can say strongly enough how important these amendments to the Crimes Act are. I am pleased that the other side supports the amendments, but I suppose I am surprised at their reluctance to do so because of the imminence of the national guidelines.

We should consider what stalking means and what it means to the victims. The victims are usually women. I suppose I want members to imagine what it would be like trying to live a life where you cannot enjoy the peace of your own home, when you cannot do the ordinary, everyday tasks in the community - going to work, doing ordinary things like going shopping - without someone spying on you or creating some problems in your going about those tasks. The simple, everyday things in life are stopped for the victims of stalking. For this reason, I think it is important that we introduce these changes as soon as possible. Yes, national regulations are important, but the point is that they can take many years to come to conclusion. I think we have a very obvious example of that in terms of gun control. Police Ministers had been meeting for years and years to decide what sorts of guns should be excluded, what should be banned, what should be allowed. It took a great tragedy in Tasmania before suddenly everyone could be galvanised into action. I think stalking has some similar parallels to that case.

The unfortunate thing about stalking and the perpetrators of this is that it is very difficult at times to actually define it. It is very difficult at times to find the evidence that supports it. You do not have, I suppose, the advantage or the luck of having evidence as you do in a tragedy where guns are used and you have an obvious victim; here you do not have the physical evidence of what has happened. This psychological intimidation, where there are no marks and no visible signs of what is going on, makes it even harder for the victim to get assistance and allows a perpetrator to continue the actions that they are taking. It is difficult for the victim, even in this day and age, even with all the evidence on domestic violence and violence within the home, to get support, including support from police. Even as recently as last month in Canberra when a woman went to the police for assistance she was basically told, "Don't worry, dear; just tell him to go away. He will listen to you". It is unfortunate, in this situation, that the woman has not been able to get any peace. She cannot attend her workplace, she cannot be at home without getting nuisance phone calls. This continues. We need this legislation to assist those people, usually women - often women who are on their own - who are being victimised by people who consider that they can invade another's personal space and any other space in the community that they want to use.

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