Queensland parliament has passed controversial legislation permitting police to issue on-the-spot domestic violence orders despite warnings from experts and advocacy group that the laws could be weaponised against victim-survivors.
Liberal National party members of state parliament voted to pass legislation granting police the power to issue “police protection directives”, with conditions similar to other domestic violence protection orders.
The new laws will take effect in January and do not require a judge’s oversight. Police are also not required to get the consent of a suspected victim before issuing an order.
It passed over the opposition of every opposition and crossbench MP at its second reading debate, and much of the domestic violence sector.
The Queensland police minister, Dan Purdie, said they would save “hundreds of thousands of hours” of police time”.
But the Queensland council of social service argued that the approach prioritises “police efficiencies over the safety and wellbeing of victim-survivors,” it said.
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About 70 submissions to a parliamentary inquiry – including from experts and advocacy groups – called for the government to rethink the plan. Most raised concerns about misidentification – where police identify the victim of domestic violence as the perpetrator.
According to evidence cited by the Queensland Council of Social Service, about 44.4% of women murdered in domestic violence incidents reviewed by the Queensland Domestic and Family Violence Death Review and Advisory Board had been misidentified at least once. “Nearly all” Indigenous women investigated had been identified as a perpetrator by police before they were murdered, it found.
Queensland’s Mental Health Commission cited evidence from Women’s Legal Services New South Wales that more than half of women listed as respondents to apprehended domestic violence orders were in fact the primary victim of abuse.
The Queensland Police Union of Employees general president, Shane Prior, strongly defended the legislation at its parliamentary inquiry.
He said the rates of women identified as perpetrators had declined from 22% to 23% in 2022 to just 12%, and described the evidence about misidentification as “anecdotal”.
About 97% of police domestic violence applications were upheld in court, he said.
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“We know that police can be trusted to get it right because the courts overwhelmingly back their decisions,” Prior told the inquiry.
He pointed to a string of inquiries, including the commission of inquiry into the Queensland police service responses to domestic violence, for greatly improving “our understanding of the scale of the problem and deficiencies in system responses”.
Police had improved training as a result, he said.
The 2022 inquiry into the Queensland police heard evidence that officers disbelieved female victims and actively avoided attending calls.
Many of its recommendations have yet to be implemented. The new police protection orders were not recommended.
The government also passed a series of unrelated amendments to the bill on Thursday that were introduced at the last minute. The amendments gave the attorney general the power to fire the director of Forensic Sciences Queensland (FSQ) – the state government’s independent DNA lab – and also to give them directions. It also exempts the state government from lawsuits after a recent damning report into FSQ.
