Portfolio — 28 August 2026

The defining discourse from Eildon in this window is family violence legislative reform, with the Member for Eildon, Ms McLEISH, delivering the substantive Coalition contribution to the Assembly's debate on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Family Violence, Coercive Control, Good Character, Risk Assessment and Other Matters) Bill 2026 [TA-260826-vichns-9f81c0b98fb9:s074].

Ms McLEISH's speech situated the bill within a political sequence she traced directly to the Opposition: the Leader of the Opposition announced criminalisation of coercive control as her first policy in December 2025, and Ms McLEISH subsequently introduced a private member's bill on the same issue with cross-party support. Ms McLEISH stated in the Assembly that she believes Parliament's sustained pressure forced the government to advance the legislation, which it introduced on 11 August [TA-260826-vichns-9f81c0b98fb9:s072].

That sequencing claim was echoed in the third-party lane: Ms Kealy expressed concern that the government's failure to adopt the Coalition's private member's bill until August 2026 produced an 18-month delay leaving victim-survivors without legal protection for an extended period [TA-260826-vichns-9f81c0b98fb9:s077].

On the bill's substance, Ms McLEISH set out the case for urgency using comparative data: New South Wales recorded 28 coercive control reports per month, Queensland 149 reports between May and October 2025, and the United Kingdom 853 convictions in the year ending December 2024. In Victoria, family violence call-outs reached 106,427 in the past year — up 8 per cent over five years — and breaches of family violence orders rose 17 per cent to 64,713, with nearly one in four intervention orders subsequently breached [TA-260826-vichns-9f81c0b98fb9:s072].

The bill itself creates a new criminal offence of coercive control carrying a maximum 10-year sentence, amending the Crimes Act 1958 to capture intimidation, humiliation, surveillance, isolation and manipulation designed to control another person. It also removes good character as a mitigating factor in sentencing, amends the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 to protect victim-survivors from discrimination in employment and accommodation, strengthens the MARAM framework, expands grooming protections to personal safety intervention orders, and permits criminal courts to vary family violence intervention orders with victim consent.

While supporting the bill, the Coalition — through both Ms McLEISH and other members — characterised it as incomplete. Ms McLEISH committed the Coalition to introducing Clare's law, a domestic violence disclosure scheme modelled on United Kingdom and South Australian precedent, which would give individuals the right to ask police about a partner's violence history and place a proactive disclosure duty on police [TA-260826-vichns-9f81c0b98fb9:s072].

The Coalition also cited outstanding gaps on suppression order abuse, prerecorded sexual assault evidence, and other victim-centred protections as work the government has not yet addressed. Ms McLEISH separately acknowledged that misidentification of perpetrators — disproportionately affecting First Nations women and the LGBTI community — remains a significant problem requiring ongoing reform.

The wider Assembly debate brought a parallel coercion matter into frame. The Legislative Assembly Legal and Social Issues Committee tabled its report Crossing the Line: Coercion and Harm in High Control Groups, documenting lived experiences of cult and high-control group survivors and recommending establishment of a formal advisory body and a Victorian Law Reform Commission review on criminalising group-based coercion [TA-260826-vichns-9f81c0b98fb9:s054].

Members on both sides acknowledged the contributions of previous shadow ministers and victim-survivor advocates in bringing coercive control reform to this point.

Outside the family violence debate, Ms McLEISH hosted Wesburn Primary School's grades 5 and 6 students on an extended parliamentary tour including the annexe [TA-260826-vichns-9f81c0b98fb9:s026], and congratulated Wesburn Junior Football Club on 70 years of operation and the Yea Tigers women's team on winning the 2026 division 2 premiership undefeated.