Justice Marcia Neave describes her 13-month stint as head of Australia’s first royal commission into family violence as a ‘wonderful’ challenge and experience

The head of Australia’s first royal commission into family violence, Justice Marcia Neave, has spoken of the huge task she and her team tackled over the past 13 months, including juggling extensive and sometimes contradictory evidence from more than 200 stakeholders to come up with a final list of 227 recommendations.

She has also acknowledged the areas that fell outside the commission’s scope and terms of reference, but which will be vital to address if family violence deaths are to be prevented.

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It was the Victorian government led by the premier, Daniel Andrews, that ordered the commission to undertake its work last year, and the recommendations therefore needed to be targeted towards Victoria so that work could begin tackling and preventing family violence there.

But it was impossible for the commission to take on an issue such as family violence without looking at aspects of the system that the commonwealth has jurisdiction over, such as family law and the family law courts.

“It was difficult,” Neave told Guardian Australia.

“We don’t make recommendations to the federal government, but we do think there are areas the state government can push the federal government on.

“We can’t make recommendations about changing the Family Law Act, for example, but we know that the act can be dramatically improved and it is disappointing that hasn’t been done already, given previous reports ... calling for change.”

The problem is that immediate responses to family violence, such as seeking intervention orders and punishing criminal acts, involve state courts. But the federally run family law system handles things such as parenting and property disputes. The commission heard evidence over the past year that information from state court cases that could be used to inform family court rulings were often not communicated.

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Neave said the commission tried to address this by calling on state courts to better help their clients understand the different court systems and alert them to the fact that federal courts may not know the entire history of a perpetrator just because they had been before other courts previously.

The commission recommended that the Victorian government push the commonwealth to create a single database for family violence, child protection and family law matters and to also lobby for a uniform approach to family violence risk assessment across jurisdictions. But it cannot push the commonwealth’s hand.



“There have been four reports that have looked at aspects of this issue and some changes have been made to the Family Law Act, but more could be done,” Neave said.

“The situation could be dramatically improved.”

Through its report, the commission has also shown it has taken an independent and practical approach to family violence. Neave acknowledged that the state government, as well as some frontline family violence workers and academics, had called for changes to criminal law to make domestic and family violence a specific offence.

After reviewing the evidence, Neave and her team did not recommend this.

“We think current criminal laws deal adequately with most family violence-related offences, and we believe what really needs to happen is making sure that these existing laws are being properly applied,” Neave says.

“If offenders were being sentenced and convicted appropriately that would go a long way towards addressing issues with the system.

“I’ve never been one to be supportive of symbolic law reform. If, for example, you had a special family violence offence covering things like emotional abuse, I think it would be very difficult to prove and there would be few prosecutions. So I believe we must use the law we already have effectively.”

The commission also said offences such as financial abuse could be prosecuted under existing laws but that was not happening effectively.

“Police must get better at gathering evidence in financial abuse cases,” Neave said.

“The criminal law is adequate at the moment, but it’s not being enforced. Investigations into these matters are complex, so police must be resourced and empowered to carry out those investigations.”

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There were other calls for change that the commission did not recommend.

It listened for a day to evidence from alcohol researchers and experts about its impact on family violence. The Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education called for the availability and promotion of alcohol in Victoria to be regulated more tightly, including through amendments to the Liquor Control Reform Act.

All 24-hour liquor licences should be removed, it said, and the density of liquor outlets must be lowered. But the commission made no recommendations to the state government for comprehensive alcohol law reform.

“I suppose we thought that looking at the whole area of alcohol was going beyond our terms of reference,” Neave said.

“We did suggest that alcohol and its role in family violence be a factor when thinking about increasing liquor licences, but we didn’t make a formal recommendation because to go into those complexities was difficult.”

The commission’s report has been overwhelmingly welcomed by family violence stakeholders. But there are groups that Guardian Australia understands are reserving their comment until they have gone through the 1,900 page, seven-volume document.

Neave described her work as a “wonderful” challenge and experience.

A former judge of the supreme court of appeal, she has also been a professor at three universities and has taught family law at Monash University. She was the foundation chair of the Victorian Law Reform Commission, with much of her work focusing on homicide and sexual offences, and she is a former New South Wales commissioner for law reform.

Despite her extensive experience in the area of family violence, she said she has learned things that have surprised even her.

“The first being how absolutely pervasive family violence is,” Neave said.

“Of course I knew it was a very serious and extensive problem, but I don’t think I realised the dimensions and the scale of it.

“The fact that it has been flying under the radar for so long despite all of the groups, especially women’s groups, trying to get something done about it, is another thing that struck me.

“The other thing I really noticed is the enormous resilience and generosity of the people who really wanted to bring about change in this area.”

She believed the work of her and her team would have national implications, and given the commission heard from international experts she believed other countries would watch Victoria to see the impact of the commission’s recommendations once implemented.

Andrews has promised to adopt every recommendation. The office of the state opposition leader, Matthew Guy, is yet to respond to Guardian Australia’s requests for comment.

Neave said she had no plans to retire but is unsure what her next role would entail.

“I don’t think I’ll ever retire,” she said. “I love doing policy work, and I find it fascinating to look at and work on social policy problems.”