State government unveils $100m family violence plan

Ballarat received a cryptic hint there would be an "announcement soon" for its grieving community, but there was no broader recognition of the greater need in regional areas or any targeted solutions to address its higher rates of violence and underresourced services.

Premier Jacinta Allan said the new reform package would be three pronged, addressing laws, culture, and the supports around family and gendered violence.

Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes announced a suite of legal changes designed to shift the focus away from the victims of family violence and onto the perpetrators.

A key change would be lengthening and strengthening Family Violence Intervention Orders (FVIOs), creating a mandatory minimum for intervention orders to avoid victims having to come into court for extensions, which created further trauma for many.

Ms Symes said most FVIOs were only issued for six to 12 months.

"This isn't good enough. They need longer protection. They need to be separated from the perpetrator for longer periods of time," she said.

"If women are unsafe they shouldn't have to come back to the court time and time again."

But she couldn't say what the new minimum would be.

"We want to put a bottom floor on it, but I want to go out to consultation. There are mixed views, some people say years, some people say [forever]," Ms Symes said.

"Six to 12 months is just not long enough and people want protection for much longer than that if not forever."

The government will also make it faster for victim-survivors to get strong intervention orders.

Police can currently issue on-the-spot Family Violence Safety Orders, which last seven days, but this needs to go to court to be turned into an FVIO.

Ms Symes said the government was looking at options to create longer-lasting safety orders, or on-the-spot FVIOs, or the ability to turn a safety order into an FVIO without pushing the victim-survivor into court.

She said there would also be a "crackdown" on serious FVIO breaches, sending a message to "dangerous offenders" that "the full force of the law" would come down on them.

The government will also be tightening up stalking laws to close a loophole in the "course of conduct" charge many offenders were managing to wriggle through.

The course of conduct stalking charge treats a series of individual acts as a single pattern of conduct, but Ms Symes said too many charges weren't making it to conviction. She said the government would legislate the changes in 2025.

Ms Allan said more educational investment was key to the long-term success of the plan.

"We know that nothing will change [and] we won't be able to make real progress until we both work with men, and boys as well, to build positive behaviours and change the culture around around men's behaviour," she said.

The government will drastically expand its Respectful Relationships program from operating in just 100 government schools, to 1200 across the state. It will also be offered to any non-government school that wishes to participate.

The Modelling Respect and Equality program, which puts healthy masculine adult role models into schools, will also expand from a pilot program of 100 schools into 240 schools.

The program expansions will start rolling out immediately.

The Victorian government spends more on family violence measures than all the other states combined, but Ms Allan said more needed to be done.

The biggest potential support increase announced in the package was also the most vague, with a plan to draw on the $1 billion federal National Housing Infrastructure Facility (NHIF) to create more emergency accommodation across the state.

The program is open to grants from government as well as other groups, but the government couldn't confirm whether it planned to build new housing, or convert existing accommodation, or who would staff the new accommodation when it became available.

Victoria has 168 refuge beds across the state, with just 20 per cent of women who flee violence getting placed in refuge accommodation. The remainder are put in motels and hotels, with 50 per cent of those having "unsafe exits".

Ms Allan also announced a boost in perpetrator case management, and follow ups with men who completed behaviour change courses, to ensure perpetrators didn't slip through the cracks and risk re-offending.

One initiative that could help the regions is support for a Stay at Home pilot program run by McAuley Community Services for Women, providing rapid safety planning and wrap around support to help women who are at-risk of becoming homeless due to family violence.

McAuley hopes to roll out the pilot in 60 households across Geelong, but the government could not confirm what kind of support it would be providing.

The government also announced extra funding for therapeutic support for child victims of family violence, as well as increased help for CALD and First Nations communities, but couldn't say how much or when extra support would be provided.

"This additional package totals up to be about $100 million of additional investment," Ms Allan said.

"But to be frank it's less about the money and more about the change and reform, which is why there's been a really strong focus on the justice reforms.

"When women are still dying at the hands of men - we must do more. From prevention to response to justice, these reforms will target family violence at every stage."