Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

While I support the member for Grayndler in his call for a conscience vote on same-sex relationships, I will be opposing his substantial position. Darren Chester, the member for Gippsland, and I have been trying to change the culture of our electorates in regard to violence against women, family violence, and violence against children. In Victoria we have on-the-spot notices issued by police that are called family violence notices. They remove the perpetrator from the scene of the incident. This is able to be done by the police on the spot. I am going to table the documents because I do not have time to read them all. The police can apply for a family violence safety notice if someone needs protection. The safety notice can protect the affected family members before an intervention order application is heard in court and a police officer can only apply for a family violence safety notice if they believe that a respondent is an adult. The police cannot issue a notice against a person under 18. A safety notice can protect. What I am calling for today is, at the next COAG meeting, for these family violence notices to be set in the process of becoming law right across Australia so that it is not the women and children who are moved out of the home in this case but the perpetrator.

Family violence is not something that you read about happening to somebody in a newspaper somewhere, who is some other woman or some other family. The violence affects not only the person attacked but the children of the person, the state of the household and the physical state or the mental state of the person being attacked. It affects those who have to, No. 1, care for the situation that is put in front of them—for example, those people who care for those who have been damaged when they turn up in hospital or other care units. Family violence costs millions of dollars across Australia. We cannot afford this to go on any longer. That is why I am calling for this great south land to join together at the next COAG conference to change the culture of family violence in this nation, especially violence against women, by introducing these particular family safety notices right across this nation. It is uniform. It will say that the police, under these provisions, which I am about to ask to be tabled, can walk in and say to the perpetrator, 'Mate, you are out of here and you do not come back until you have been to court. They can do their best to find you a place.' So I ask, Acting Deputy Speaker Wicks, if these documents I have in my hand may be tabled.

Leave granted.

I table the documents.