Victorian Royal Commission into Family Violence: Improving the family violence legal system

Our submission specifically addresses the Commission’s term of reference:
(2) investigate the means of having systemic responses to family violence, particularly in the legal system and by police, corrections, child protection, legal and family violence support services, including reducing reoffending and changing violent and controlling behaviours

Our submission will focus on the following areas of the legal system:

• Strengthening the family violence intervention order court system.
• Creating access to the Victims of Crime Assistance Tribunal.
• Improving Victoria Police response to family violence.
• Strengthening the role of CLCs in the family violence system.
• Recent legislative amendments that create unjust outcomes for family violence victims.

Our objective, in our submission, is to communicate the experience of the women that we work with as well as our experience as lawyers representing women in the family violence, victims of crime and family law jurisdictions. 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.