Crimes (Domestic and Personal Violence) Act (New South Wales)

The Act aims to prevent, ensure accountability for, and apply standards set by the United Nations and the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women to domestic violence. It aims to fulfill these objectives by “empowering courts to make apprehended domestic violence orders to protect people from domestic violence, intimidation (including harassment) and stalking” (§ 9(2)(a)). Intimidation is defined as: “conduct amounting to harassment or molestation of the person,” “an approach made to the person by any means (including by telephone, telephone text messaging, e-mailing, and other technologically assisted means) that causes the person to fear for his or her safety,” or “any conduct that causes a reasonable apprehension of injury to a person or to a person with whom he or she has a domestic relationship, or of violence or damage to any person or property” (§ 7(1)). Stalking is defined as following, watching, frequenting the vicinity of or approaching a person’s place of residence, business or work, or any place that a person frequents for the purposes of any social or leisure activity (§ 8(1)). The Act (at Parts 3 and 4) gives courts the authority to issue orders relating to apprehended domestic or personal violence. The Act provides that a “person who stalks or intimidates another person with the intention of causing the other person to fear physical or mental harm” may be punished with up to five years imprisonment (§ 13(1)). A person who “knowingly contravenes a prohibition or restriction specified in an apprehended violence order made against the person” may be punished with up to two years imprisonment (§ 14(1)).

NSW, much like the rest of Australia, suffers from high incidents of domestic violence. Across Australia, one in three women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence perpetrated by someone known to them, one in five women have been stalked during their lifetime, and on average one woman is killed every week by a current or former partner. Aboriginal women and girls are 35 times more likely than the wider female population to be hospitalised due to family violence. In 2016, the NSW Minister for the Prevention of Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, launched the ‘NSW Domestic Family Violence Blueprint for Reform 2016-2021: Safer Lives for Women, Men and Children’ setting out actions to reform the domestic violence system in NSW over a five-year period (the blueprint is the first of its kind in Australia). The NSW Government has allocated AUD 350 million in the 2017/18 budget over a four-year period to fund the effort. (http://www.bocsar.nsw.gov.au/Pages/bocsar_pages/Domestic-Violence.aspx; https://www.whiteribbon.org.au/understand-domestic-violence/facts-violence-women/domestic-violence-statistics/; http://www.domesticviolence.nsw.gov.au/home)