The Queensland government says it will allow police officers to issue instant year-long domestic violence protection orders – a proposal that experts say could put vulnerable women at greater risk of harm.
The state’s police minister, Dan Purdie, says the plan would save “hundreds of thousands of hours” of police time.
But domestic and family violence experts and victims’ advocates say handing police the power to issue on-the-spot orders – avoiding the need for a time-consuming court process – risks compounding problems caused by the widespread police misidentification of victims in DFV matters.
Heather Douglas, a law professor at the University of Melbourne and an expert on protection orders, said the plan was “really problematic” and risked negative consequences for people wrongly labelled perpetrators by police, particularly First Nations women.
“Orders shouldn’t be given out like parking fines,” Douglas said.
The 2022 inquiry into police responses to domestic and family violence heard evidence that officers disbelieved female victims and actively avoided attending DFV calls.
Research shows that almost half of the women murdered in Queensland had previously been labelled the perpetrator of domestic violence by police.
Guardian Australia first revealed last year that the former Labor government had begun consultation on a police-led “efficiency” proposal – pushed by the former police commissioner Katarina Carroll – that would allow for officers to issue on-the-spot, year-long orders.
Confidential briefing documents were leaked to Guardian Australia at the time amid serious concern among women’s advocates about the impact of the idea.
The former government had planned to introduce its laws in March last year, but shelved the proposal after the details leaked, and after taking onboard the concern about its potential impact on victims. The new government now appears to have taken up the same proposal.
Under existing laws, police can issue a temporary “protection notice” that lasts until a magistrate can hear an application for a domestic violence order.
The new proposal would enable a “police protection direction” that lasted a year.
“It’s really important that there’s careful consideration for a protection order,” Douglas said.
“I think the risk is [that police] end up [issuing orders] that aren’t appropriate just to save themselves time and that’s really problematic.”
Angela Lynch, the executive officer of the Queensland Sexual Assault Network, said Tasmania used a similar system of police protection directions. She said DFV services and victims agencies there were now “advocating for their removal as they have increased misidentification of victims as perpetrators, which has had devastating consequences for the safety and justice of many vulnerable women and children”.
Lynch said the network was also concerned about the 12-month timeframe for police notices, when court-issued orders typically lasted for five years.
“A key recommendation from the Not Now, Not Ever inquiry was to increase the time of protection orders from two years (at that time) to five years to reduce victim-survivor’s trauma in having to retell their experience at multiple court events.”
“We hope that the government has fully engaged with the DFV sector to fully understand all the consequences and impacts on victim survivors of these changes.”
Purdie said the laws would reduce paperwork at a time when the police domestic violence workload had increased dramatically.
“We want to give police tools that they can rapidly put in place protection toward vulnerable victims of domestic violence. We want to hold perpetrators to account and protect all victims of crime,” Purdie told reporters on Friday.
“What this does is allows police, once they’ve identified the person most in need of protection, they can rapidly put an order in place to protect that person. They can do that on the spot.
“We know we need to give the police those resources and those laws to be able to identify the person most in need of protection and to take decisive action to protect that person.”
