MINISTERIAL STATEMENTS

Ms CHANEY (Curtin) (11:06): I rise to speak on the Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commission's yearly report to parliament for 2026. This is the commission's third yearly report, and it shows some progress but not at the scale or pace needed to change the trajectory for people affected and to save lives. Commissioner Micaela Cronin has built this year's report around our national commitment that domestic, family and sexual violence should be rare, brief and non-recurring.

Her point is that this is a goal we can measure ourselves against and is achievable. I agree with her. With crossbench colleagues, I met with the commissioner this week to discuss the report.

Today, I'll briefly outline its recommendations then focus on one of the two areas where the commission says Australians continue to experience unacceptable harm: our justice and family law systems. I also want to ask a question that's been bothering me for some time: what happens to good recommendations after they're tabled in this place? This report makes eight recommendations.

The first six describe what a mature national response looks like. New money should go to early intervention, including working with men before violence escalates, not only to crisis services. Housing, financial security and legal help should be treated as the basics of recovery.

The report proposes a national evidence collaboration so governments can learn faster about what works. The sixth is about accountability, and I'll come back to that. The last two recommendations deal with problems the commission has raised before that still haven't been fixed.

The eighth recommendation says sexual violence needs to be a distinct, funded priority. Reports of sexual violence are at their highest level since national recording began in 1993. The seventh recommendation is about the justice and family law systems, and I'll start there because it shows very clearly what is at stake.

I'll finish with the sixth recommendation because it goes to whether any of this actually gets done. The commission finds that the justice and family law systems are continuing to cause harm for people and families experiencing violence. People with lived experience told the commission that these systems drag harm out rather than resolve it.

One participant described the culture of our courts as 'untouchable and unaccountable'. The commissioner told us earlier this week that family courts are now, in practice, where the cases involving violence end up. Being in the family court system is in itself a risk factor for violence, but we haven't designed the system around that reality.

So the commission recommends the family law courts be recognised and enabled to act as a family violence court. It asks the Attorney-General's Department to lead a time-bound program with the states and territories, with measurable actions. One of these actions is to identify and reduce the use of legal and administrative systems to continue abuse.

This is often called systems abuse or the weaponization of the courts, and it's hard to see from the outside because each step on its own looks legitimate—a new application, an appeal, a request for documents, a move to a different tribunal. Any one of these is just someone using their legal rights, but, put together over years, they can become a way of keeping control over someone long after the relationship is over.

I'd like to tell the chamber what this looks like for one woman in my electorate. She's asked me to share her experience, and I'll do that without identifying her. She experienced years of coercive control, psychological abuse and intimidation.

In 2020, she reported it to the police. She's needed their protection several times since, and she has had family violence restraining orders in place against her former husband. She's also spent years in the family court.

Her former partner lost his most recent application and was ordered to pay her costs. He hasn't paid. If she wants that money, she has to fund another application to enforce an order the court has already made.

Meanwhile, he's taken a child-support matter to the Administrative Review Tribunal. That's another forum requiring another response and more money she doesn't have. She is exhausted, and exhausting her is how this kind of abuse works.

This is exactly what recommendation 7 describes—legal and administrative systems used to prolong control and wear down a person's resources. The family courts, child support and the tribunal are all Commonwealth responsibilities. This is our problem to fix.

None of this will surprise anyone who works in this area. It didn't surprise me. In the last parliament, I was a member of the Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs' inquiry into family violence orders.

We tabled our report in February 2025 with 11 recommendations drawn from public hearings and more than 90 submissions. Witnesses describe systems abuse as entrenched and endemic. We heard that perpetrators who represent themselves can use the court system to keep the abuse going and drive up costs for the other party.

Our recommendation 10 asked the government to lead a package of reforms to eliminate opportunities for systems abuse. That included a screening tool to pick up systems abuse and unmeritorious applications, and processes that let courts step in to protect victims-survivors in high-risk matters. It was a careful recommendation built on evidence and on what victims-survivors told us, often at a real cost to themselves.

The government responded in September 2025. It agreed in principle to seven recommendations, agreed in part to three, including recommendation 10, and noted one. There has been real reform, and I want to acknowledge it.

We have harmful proceedings orders, and new protections for sensitive health and counselling records, and economic abuse is included in the definition of family violence. There has also been an audit of Commonwealth systems, including child support. These are all important, but much of the government's response describes work that was already underway, reviews that will consider our findings and matters for the states.

The statutory reviews of our recent family law amendments don't start until 2027 and 2028. The national review of domestic violence order frameworks was due to report by June this year. I'd like to know what it found and what happens next.

Now the commission is making many of the same points again. Its 2025 report made 30 recommendations. This year, it says that progress has been uneven, particularly on public visibility of implementation.

On justice and family law, it notes these issues have come up in previous yearly reports and in inquiry after inquiry. This is a design problem rather than a criticism of the people doing the work. We're good at inquiries in this country, but we're not good at following through.

At the moment, a government response is usually where the process ends, but it should be where the real work starts. A recommendation agreed to in principle does nothing for the woman in my electorate, so what would help? Here are a few practical suggestions.

First, recommendation 6 of the commission's report asks governments to give timely, public responses to significant recommendations. That shouldn't be a big ask, but, earlier this year, my office found more than 50 government responses to parliamentary committee reports that were overdue, some by years. Many of those have since been answered, but only after we raised them.

Recommendation 6 also asks for the commission to be given statutory independence and proper information-gathering powers. The 2024 Rapid review of prevention approaches recommended this, and the commission asked for it again last year. It's hard to hold anyone to account if you can't get the information.

Second, once a government accepts a recommendation, it should transparently publish updates on its progress implementing it. The commission calls for exactly this kind of transparency in recommendation 6 and 7. Third, and this is one for us here in parliament, committees should routinely go back to their reports and ask what happened.

My office is now working on the next, and arguably more important, phase of improving transparency around public inquiries: tracking whether governments actually implement the recommendations they accept. The family violence orders inquiry is on that list, but this shouldn't depend on a crossbench office keeping a spreadsheet. Recommendation 7 asks for a time-bound program with measurable actions.

I support that, and I'd ask the Attorney-General to publish that program and to fold in the unfinished parts of our committee's recommendation 10. In particular, it should recognise when litigation is being used to wear someone down and should make sure court orders are enforced without the victim having to pay again. To the woman who wrote to me: I've shared your story directly with the commissioner and now with the parliament.

I'll keep asking the questions and pushing for a system that better protects people like you. Rare, brief and non-recurring is the goal, but we won't reach it by writing the same recommendations again and again.