Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence: Multi-jurisdictional issues

This submission was developed with a single focus – to consider how multi-jurisdictional issues can be effectively dealt with in the legal system, in particular where there is an intersection between family violence law, family law and child protection.

The submission covers three key areas:

• Improving responses to family law in the family violence legal system.
• Developing a “one family, one court model” in the Magistrates’ Courts.
• Strengthening the family violence framework in the family law system.

Our objective, in our submission, is to communicate the experience of the women that we work with. Our client group consists of women from a range of different cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds. The women we assist are low income earners and are often at high risk of domestic violence as result of disability, age, visa status or cultural or ethnic background.