opinion
Libby Mettam: Women suffer as WA dallies

Ariel Bombara is a powerful young woman whose story and courage deserve the utmost respect. The daughter of Floreat double-murderer Mark Bombara spoke this week at the march against domestic and family violence, with the clarity of experience, about the coercive and controlling abuse her mother endured from her father. Ms Bombara says while her father did not physically attack her mother, he made her life a living hell in the years before he gunned down her mother’s best friend and her daughter while hunting for her and her mother after they fled the family home. She described her father as a master manipulator who would twist her mother’s words and gaslight her until she couldn’t trust her own mind, who openly disparaged women in front of his daughters, who broke their possessions and drove dangerously with the expressed intent of terrifying them. No one who heard Ms Bombara speak was left in any doubt as to what constituted coercive control. Minister Sabine Winton then told the same function the Cook Labor Government had not introduced laws to criminalise coercive control and could not even give a timeline for the legislation because she was not satisfied West Australians “knew enough” about coercive control. I don’t believe Minister Winton intentionally set out to paint the public as being too simple to know what’s good for them but was, instead, exasperated at trying to find a credible excuse for why her Government had not prioritised lifesaving coercive control legislation in the current term of Parliament. Minister Winton said there must be community understanding of “the behaviours that are unacceptable”. I’d like to think this is a solidarity position that has been forced on the minister by caucus rather than an earnestly held belief. We spend our entire lives learning what “behaviours are unacceptable”. There are thousands of women who daily experience coercive control, who understand exactly what coercive control looks like and understand exactly what unacceptable behaviour is. Minister, the people who need to understand, do understand. Labor first dangled the carrot of coercive control legislation in 2021. Public submissions on coercive control legislation for WA, as introduced in other States, closed in July 2022. Two and a half years later and still no legislation has been brought to Parliament. WA also has the advantage of following in the footsteps of legislation already introduce by other States. Much of the drafting work has already been done. With Parliament now not sitting again until after next year’s March State election, it will be the middle of 2025 before even the most motivated government will have any chance of having the laws in place. Statistically, another five women will die in WA due to domestic violence between now and the middle of 2025. While the Cook Government has dithered and deflected over coercive control laws, WA has become the most dangerous State in Australia in which to be a woman. Incidents of family and domestic violence in WA have increased more than 54 per cent since Labor took office in 2017. West Australians deserve legislation that gives them refuge from thugs. Instead, the Cook Labor Government has wasted precious parliamentary time on the agendas of its far-left fringe, prioritising laws to allow children to change the sex on their birth certificate, to defend the use of puberty blockers on children, to ensure the Labor brand is protected in an election and to pass and then repeal the flawed Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act. The Cook Government is yet to give a valid reason for not introducing coercive control laws. The WA Liberal Party has previously made the offer to sit additional days — and even nights — if it meant we could pass stronger protections for women from family and domestic violence. The WA Liberals believe that everything should be done to stop this scourge on our society and there are five things we will do immediately if elected in 2025. We will introduce coercive control legislation, invest $100 million in GPS tracking of repeat offenders to keep victims safe, reform parole laws to keep violent offenders behind bars, strengthen bail laws to better protect victims from ongoing threats and increase the capacity of WA Police’s domestic violence unit. WA Labor has had eight years to address these issues, the WA Liberals won’t waste a minute. To say WA cannot have coercive control legislation because we don’t know what we don’t know is insulting. Coercive control is not that hard to understand. Thousands of WA women know it and live it every day. By failing to pass coercive control laws, the Cook Labor Government has failed to give those women hope and a haven in the law. Libby Mettam is the Liberal leader

opinionLibby Mettam: Women suffer as WA dallies

The No. 1 source of news for every West Australian

opinion
Libby Mettam: Women suffer as WA dallies