I rise to make some brief remarks around this debate and the bill that is being sought to be introduced by the opposition regarding coercive control.

At the outset I also want to acknowledge the seriousness of the debate on coercive control and its devastating impacts on our communities right now and on our victim-survivors, who are mainly women and children. Many of them, as the member for Lara has indicated, are silent victims of family violence.

I do acknowledge that this is an issue that this Parliament – and this chamber – has a responsibility to treat with the seriousness and the gravity that it deserves, just as we did, and I did, last sitting week when we spoke on the Justice Legislation Amendment (Family Violence, Stalking and Other Matters) Bill 2025 amendments.

I spoke in this place around coercive control, stalking behaviour and the horrific statistics that we are seeing now, where teenage boys are the most likely perpetrators of child sexual abuse in this country ‍– absolutely devastating. I spoke about the research and the work that Jesuit Social Services had done around the Adolescent Man Box survey, where they interviewed teenagers, 14- to 18-year-olds, to talk about coercive control behaviours and eventually around stalking behaviours, and about our society, where we send messages to boys that they need to be strong, this version of what a man should be.

When men and boys have these narrow versions of men having to be strong and in control, what that leads to can be coercive control and stalking behaviours. In this place, just last sitting week, we had reforms around this to strengthen and improve our response to the ongoing changes that we see in our society, including the social media space.

We know that we have more to do, and the minister has said this, and we have said this in this place a lot of the time around introducing reforms as our society changes. But we also do not want to have laws that have unintended consequences, and we need to make sure we do this thoroughly.

We have in this place done an incredible amount of work in this space since the royal commission, and we have done that with due diligence, making sure that we were consulting the right stakeholders and, importantly, victim-survivors. I want to just acknowledge and take a moment to talk about those people who have spoken up about their lived experience.

I had the privilege – it might have been two years ago now – to meet Hannah Clarke’s parents Sue and Lloyd Clarke, who devastatingly lost their grandchildren and their child, their daughter, in horrific circumstances. I heard them speak, and I heard them advocate for change, and they have been tireless in supporting victims of family violence but also victims who see the red flags at the very start before the violence occurs, and that is the coercive control. I really want to thank them for their advocacy.

After they spoke, I went up to them and thanked them for their courage to speak, but I also asked them if there was something that they wished would change, and they said ‘standalone coercive control laws’. It is something that this government is working on, and we have said that we will introduce those standalone laws. What must be central is those victim-survivors’ voices, but we also have the responsibility to get the legalities right.

We must do that to ensure that it works with the system that we have here in Victoria already. We have a world-leading family violence response system, including our multi-agency risk assessment and management framework, our family violence information-sharing scheme and the reforms that we have put around coercive control, but we must acknowledge and we have acknowledged that we will do more in this space.

So while I understand and thank sincerely the intent behind this bill, the government will not be supporting it, because we need to do that due diligence around this issue. We will not be supporting this bill.

Assembly divided on motion: