Family and domestic violence

The Salvation Army provided a written submission to the Northern Territory Government Department of Attorney-General and Justice’s Exposure Draft Justice Legislation Amendment (Domestic and Family Violence) Bill 2023. 

In this submission, we focus on: 

• The introduction of a definition of coercive control. We urge the importance of coinciding education and training, increased service sector capacity, consideration of the needs of victim-survivors in rural and remote areas, and collaboration with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and organisations.  
• The importance of education and training in preventing the misidentification of victim-survivors as perpetrators of family and domestic violence. 

Many of our recommendations come down to the need to keep victim-survivors at the centre, and to create a family and domestic violence sector that is well informed, resourced, accessible, and culturally competent. We emphasise that by building and strengthening the domestic and family violence service sector, alongside legislative reform, greater and stronger protections for victim-survivors can be ensured. 

We highlight that legislative reform alone will not achieve sustainable long-term outcomes for victim-survivors of family and domestic violence and draw attention to critical systemic reforms to ensure the intentions of the proposed legislative changes are supported. This submission contains only a few of The Salvation Army’s recommendations related to systemic reform as directly relevant to the proposed amendments in the Bill.  

We draw attention to our submission to the Northern Territory Department of the Attorney-General and Justice’s ‘Review of Legislation and the Justice Response to Domestic and Family Violence in the Northern Territory’ for further recommendations that can strengthen the Northern Territory’s response to family and domestic violence. 

The Salvation Army’s response has been informed by our frontline experience in the delivery of family and domestic violences support services in the Northern Territory.