Australia’s first coercive control laws come into force to stem tide of domestic violence News
Bidgee, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Australia’s first coercive control laws come into force to stem tide of domestic violence

Laws criminalizing coercive control came into force in New South Wales (NSW), Australia on Monday. Section 54D of the NSW’s Crimes Act 1900 criminalizes coercive conduct and abusive behavior against intimate partners by attaching a maximum penalty of seven years imprisonment upon conviction.

The legislation, which is the first stand-alone offence of coercive control in any Australian jurisdiction, commences as 38 women have been killed in Australia this year with a man charged or convicted of it, according to the ABC’s record and activist organisation Counting Dead Women. This means that 17 more women have been killed compared to the same time last year in Australia.

The Crimes Legislation Amendment (Coercive Control) Act 2022 was passed by the NSW Parliament in November 2022, following a NSW Joint Select Committee on Coercive Control report which recommended the implementation of a criminal offense of coercive control. The delayed commencement of the Act accounts for the Committee’s recommendation that considerable education, training and consultation with the police take place first.

In NSW, coercive control has been strongly linked to intimate partner homicide. The NSW Domestic Violence Deaths Review team found that 97 percent of intimate partner homicides in the State were preceded by emotional or psychological abuse as a form of coercive control between 2000 and 2018. The legislation will not be applied retroactively, targeting only offenses committed after 1 July 2024.

In a media release from Monday, the NSW government announced that the NSW police have been and are continuing to undergo training to respond to the complex and nuanced signs of coercive control. Minister for Police and Counter-terrorism Yasmin Catley stated:

The mandatory training is thorough, it shows how seriously the NSW Police Force are taking this, and it ensures all operational police can identify and take action against coercive control offences in NSW. The feedback I’m getting from the police on the ground is that the training is valuable, comprehensive and officers feel well supported.

Concerns have been raised over how these laws may disproportionately impact Aboriginal women, who are often wrongly arrested and accused of family violence despite being eight times more likely to be killed by an intimate partner than non-Aboriginal women and 45 times more likely to experience family violence.

Christine Robinson of Wirringa Baiya Aboriginal Women’s Legal Centre said in their submission to the Joint Select Committee report:

[If an] Aboriginal woman is uneasy or unable to persuade a police officer that she is the primary victim of physical violence, what hope or incentive is there to persuade a police officer that she has experienced ongoing psychological and/or economic abuse [under the new law]?

Stand-alone coercive control offences are nonetheless likely to become more commonplace in Australia with Queensland’s Parliament passing similar legislation in March of this year and South Australia currently consulting on draft legislation.

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