Victorian Labor promises new offences to close domestic and family violence ‘loopholes’

Premier Ben Carroll says if re-elected Labor will legislate a new form of manslaughter and increase maximum penalty for rape to life imprisonment

Rapists could face life sentences and lawyers would be prevented from asking humiliating questions of victim-survivors under a suite of Victorian Labor pre-election commitments designed to reduce violence against women.

Premier Ben Carroll on Sunday announced an election commitment to legislate a new form of manslaughter covering cases in which a person takes their own life as a result of family violence, as well as a new offence covering perpetrators abandoning a victim in need of medical care.

The state government also plans to change the law to let courts consider patterns of sexual abuse as evidence at trial and stop barristers using “humiliating and invasive questioning techniques” in court.

“I’m sick of Victoria’s courts and defence barristers putting victims on trial,” Carroll told reporters on Sunday.

The maximum penalty for persistent family violence intervention order breaches would also be doubled to 10 years’ jail under Labor’s pitch.

The government said the two new offences would close “loopholes” that allow perpetrators to “slip through the cracks in the justice system and walk free”.

The government has also committed to increasing the maximum penalty for rape from 25 years to life imprisonment and upping the maximum penalty for every other serious sexual offence by five years. The maximum penalty for persistent breaches of family violence intervention orders would also double from five years’ imprisonment to 10.

It will also make the standard sentence for the murder of a current or former partner 30 years – up from 25.

The proposed offence criminalising the abandonment of victims in need of medical care responds to recommendations made by the coroner after the deaths of Belinda Jones and Narelle Simmons.

Jones, 40, died on the floor of her Maryborough home in July 2023 after her partner left her there overnight and then waited two hours to call an ambulance after waking to find her cold and not breathing.

Jones had succumbed to treatable bacterial infections and sepsis, which a hospital failed to diagnose during an emergency presentation days earlier. Her partner was not charged with any offence in relation to her death.

In her findings published last month , the state coroner, Liberty Sanger, said: “In my view, the act of abandoning a victim of family violence requiring medical attention is an act of family violence, that instils fear in the victim and affirms a perpetrator’s control over the victim.”

Simmons, 42, died in October 2021 after her partner admitted to punching her twice in the face and elbowing her once in the back of the head before leaving her Cranbourne home.