After two failed territory trials and fierce lobbying by police, the ACT finally has committed to the electronic monitoring of serious criminal offenders.
The surprise pledge by Chief Minister Andrew Barr came on Wednesday after the conclusion of an urgent national cabinet meeting on gender-based violence, convened by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in Sydney.
The ACT government had committed $297,000 in last year's budget to yet another "feasibility study" of electronic monitoring, and this was expected to send the controversy-laden technology into a familiar long-term, bureaucratic stall pattern.
However, the enormous recent public pressure exerted on the gender-based violence issue has accelerated the process enormously, with Mr Barr advising that ankle bracelets would be introduced "certainly within the space of months, not years".
"There is an evaluation process underway as to the best technology [and] there are a number of different systems used," he said.
"Another small jurisdiction, Tasmania, has recently completed a trial [and] potentially a partnership with NSW could make sense as well.
"So there's a technology and procurement decision [ahead] but I guess the threshold issue of when do we intend to proceed has been largely resolved, yes."
Immediately following the national cabinet meeting, the Prime Minister said state and territory leaders had agreed on "some actions we can take immediately" to address the gender-based violence crisis.
However, left unresolved by the Chief Minister's announcement are a number of key issues such as what technology will be adopted, which agency would provide the monitoring, what legislation will be needed to support it, and whether any potentially thorny legal conflicts will emerge with the ACT Human Rights Act.
Former ACT chief police officer and the longest-serving top cop in the territory Neil Gaughan had been a strong advocate of the technology, which has been operating across NSW for years to track serious criminals and sex offenders.
He wanted the technology rolled out as soon as possible, claiming it would solve much of the problems associated with the territory's prolific and repeated bail and parole violations.
He had argued that the technology was well understood and an EM program was "stood up" in hours by the Commonwealth late last year when the High Court ruled that immigrants on indefinite detention should be released into the community.
The ACT government assessed electronic monitoring - ankle bracelets which cannot be removed - twice before, the first time in 2001, then again in 2016-17, but for various reasons did not continue on with it.
NSW has around 600 tagged offenders, inmates on day leave programs and high risk parolees monitored by its Corrections agency.
Under a new, multi-agency collaborative domestic violence strategy, the NSW Domestic Violence Electronic Monitoring (DVEM) program applies hard exclusion zones to "high risk" offenders so that if they enter a prohibited region an alarm is immediately sent back to the monitoring room.
There are 40 domestic violence offenders on the DVEM program and about 20 of their victims, which allows Corrective Services NSW to track the offender's movement against the location of the victim. All devices are supplied by proven UK manufacturer Buddi.
