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The Guardian
04-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Queensland police to have power to issue on-the-spot domestic violence protection orders
The Queensland government says it will allow police officers to issue instant year-long domestic violence protection orders – a proposal that experts say could put vulnerable women at greater risk of harm. The state's police minister, Dan Purdie, says the plan would save 'hundreds of thousands of hours' of police time. But domestic and family violence experts and victims' advocates say handing police the power to issue on-the-spot orders – avoiding the need for a time-consuming court process – risks compounding problems caused by the widespread police misidentification of victims in DFV matters. Heather Douglas, a law professor at the University of Melbourne and an expert on protection orders, said the plan was 'really problematic' and risked negative consequences for people wrongly labelled perpetrators by police, particularly First Nations women. 'Orders shouldn't be given out like parking fines,' Douglas said. The 2022 inquiry into police responses to domestic and family violence heard evidence that officers disbelieved female victims and actively avoided attending DFV calls. Research shows that almost half of the women murdered in Queensland had previously been labelled the perpetrator of domestic violence by police. Guardian Australia first revealed last year that the former Labor government had begun consultation on a police-led 'efficiency' proposal – pushed by the former police commissioner Katarina Carroll – that would allow for officers to issue on-the-spot, year-long orders. Sign up for the Afternoon Update: Election 2025 email newsletter Confidential briefing documents were leaked to Guardian Australia at the time amid serious concern among women's advocates about the impact of the idea. The former government had planned to introduce its laws in March last year, but shelved the proposal after the details leaked, and after taking onboard the concern about its potential impact on victims. The new government now appears to have taken up the same proposal. Under existing laws, police can issue a temporary 'protection notice' that lasts until a magistrate can hear an application for a domestic violence order. The new proposal would enable a 'police protection direction' that lasted a year. 'It's really important that there's careful consideration for a protection order,' Douglas said. 'I think the risk is [that police] end up [issuing orders] that aren't appropriate just to save themselves time and that's really problematic.' Angela Lynch, the executive officer of the Queensland Sexual Assault Network, said Tasmania used a similar system of police protection directions. She said DFV services and victims agencies there were now 'advocating for their removal as they have increased misidentification of victims as perpetrators, which has had devastating consequences for the safety and justice of many vulnerable women and children'. Lynch said the network was also concerned about the 12-month timeframe for police notices, when court-issued orders typically lasted for five years. 'A key recommendation from the Not Now, Not Ever inquiry was to increase the time of protection orders from two years (at that time) to five years to reduce victim-survivor's trauma in having to retell their experience at multiple court events.' 'We hope that the government has fully engaged with the DFV sector to fully understand all the consequences and impacts on victim survivors of these changes.' Purdie said the laws would reduce paperwork at a time when the police domestic violence workload had increased dramatically. 'We want to give police tools that they can rapidly put in place protection toward vulnerable victims of domestic violence. We want to hold perpetrators to account and protect all victims of crime,' Purdie told reporters on Friday. 'What this does is allows police, once they've identified the person most in need of protection, they can rapidly put an order in place to protect that person. They can do that on the spot. 'We know we need to give the police those resources and those laws to be able to identify the person most in need of protection and to take decisive action to protect that person.'
The Guardian
20-02-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Queensland's mandatory life imprisonment for murder lacks public support, law reform body finds
Queensland's mandatory penalty of life imprisonment for murder lacks community support, according to the state's law reform commission, despite the government recently expanding the provision to cover children as young as 10. In a consultation paper released on Thursday, the Queensland Law Reform Commission described the state's sentencing scheme for murder as 'the most inflexible in Australia' and raised three options for amendment for public debate. The proposed reforms directly contradict the headline policy of the new Liberal National party government. Premier David Crisafulli last year sponsored new laws expanding the mandatory sentence to children, which the government concedes is a violation of their human rights. Sign up for Guardian Australia's breaking news email 'The community does not support the mandatory penalty of life imprisonment for murder. The community expects sentencing to reflect the culpability of murder defendants,' according to the QLRC paper. Queensland's combination of mandatory sentencing and minimum non-parole periods of at least 20 years makes it the most inflexible in the country, the commission said. South Australia, the Northern Territory, Canada and the United Kingdom are among the other jurisdictions that impose mandatory life sentences for murder. The independent law reform institution was tasked with undertaking the review as a result of a recommendation of the Women's Safety and Justice taskforce in 2021, which examined coercive control and the experience of women and girls across the criminal justice system. It conducted preliminary consultation, including 96 meetings with stakeholders including judges, prosecutors, criminal defence lawyers, DFV victim survivors, legal aid, community justice groups and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander elders. The QLRC raised four options for the state's approach to murder sentences: Making no change Keeping mandatory life for particular killings such as of very vulnerable victims like children Setting a presumptive life sentence which the defence would have to argue down Or a maximum life sentence. The latter is most common in comparable jurisdictions, it said. The mandatory penalty creates several problems, the QLRC said, including discouraging guilty pleas, with almost three-quarters of convicted defendants to a murder charge pleading not guilty, compared to just 11.2% of those guilty of manslaughter. It also does not adequately reflect the particulars and 'nature of the crime and 'may disproportionately impact disadvantaged persons, including Aboriginal peoples and Torres Strait Islander peoples … and (domestic and family violence) DFV victim survivors', the QLRC said. Sign up to Breaking News Australia Get the most important news as it breaks after newsletter promotion 'In jurisdictions, such as Victoria, where the penalty for murder is maximum life imprisonment, the rate of guilty pleas is higher than in Queensland,' the paper reads. The commission also found that the state's self-defence laws are unnecessarily complex and hard to understand, and do not work effectively for victim survivors of domestic and family violence who use force against their abuser. It found that the defence of domestic discipline – which permits the legal use of corporal punishment by parents and teachers for purposes of behavioural discipline or correction – is used to excuse the unreasonable use of serious violence. And the defence of 'killing on provocation' continues to be used by domestic violence perpetrators who have killed out of jealousy or anger. The QLRC chair, Fleur Kingham, said: 'our preliminary assessment is that significant reforms are required.' The Crisafulli government's 'adult crime, adult time' policy was a key commitment at the election in October. The government conceded it directly discriminates against children by limiting their 'protection from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment'. The commission is open to submissions from the public until 20 April. A final report with recommendations is expected in December this year.
