Men of ‘Good Character’ don’t control their partners

Victoria's legal system has long allowed a particular kind of theatre in its courtrooms. A man convicted of assault, rape, or coercive control stands before a judge, and a parade of colleagues, friends, and community leaders rises to testify that he is, in fact, a fine person. A good bloke. A pillar of the community. The victim, who has already navigated the trauma of giving evidence, then watches as the man who harmed her is partially insulated from consequence by his reputation among people who never saw what he did behind closed doors. The Victorian Government's new family violence legislation, introduced to Parliament this week, ends that particular ritual.

The good character provision is the most structurally significant reform

The good character provision is the piece that deserves the most attention, because it is the most structurally significant. Sentencing in Australian courts is not purely about the offence. Judges consider a range of mitigating factors, and character evidence, presented through written references or in-person testimony, can materially reduce a sentence. In family violence and sexual assault cases, this creates a specific and perverse dynamic: the perpetrator's ability to curate a public persona, to be charming and respected in spheres where the victim has no voice, becomes a legal asset. The man who coaches the football team and volunteers at the school fete gets a discount on the sentence for what he did to his partner at home. Removing that mechanism does not change the facts of the case, but it stops the sentencing process from rewarding the very social camouflage that perpetrators of family violence are particularly adept at maintaining.

The man who coaches the football team and volunteers at the school fete gets a discount on the sentence for what he did to his partner at home.

Coercive control law catches what physical violence law missed

Coercive control as a standalone criminal offence is the other reform that matters most in structural terms. Until now, coercive control, the pattern of behaviour that uses psychological manipulation, financial abuse, isolation, and surveillance to dominate a partner, was largely invisible to the criminal law. Police and prosecutors could only act when physical violence produced visible evidence. Coercive control typically produces no bruises. It produces a person who does not make phone calls without permission, does not have access to money, and does not believe that what is being done to them is a crime because no specific incident ever looked like a crime from the outside. Making it a standalone offence means the law can recognise the architecture of abuse rather than waiting for the moments when it becomes violent enough to photograph.

Discrimination protections remove a specific trap that stops people from leaving

The discrimination protection is the least discussed and perhaps the most practically important for the everyday lives of victim-survivors. A person leaving a violent relationship is almost always in crisis across multiple dimensions simultaneously. They may need to break a lease, miss work, change their number, relocate their children's school. The research consistently shows that the economic consequences of leaving are one of the primary reasons people do not leave. Adding legal protection against being denied a rental or penalised in employment because of family violence history removes at least one of the structural traps. It will not solve housing affordability (that is a different, more entrenched problem), but it removes a specific, addressable discrimination that was making a bad situation worse.

The strengthening of Family Violence Intervention Orders to reduce the need to return to court repeatedly is similarly practical. Every return to court is a re-exposure to the perpetrator's legal team, another round of evidence, another day's leave spent in a waiting room. The reforms require courts to consider the victim-survivor's views before extending an intervention order, which sounds procedural but represents a real shift in whose experience the process is organised around.

Each measure closes a loophole perpetrators had learned to use

What makes this package coherent is that the individual measures share a common logic: they reduce the ways in which the legal system could be used as a tool by perpetrators and expand the agency of victim-survivors within it. Stopping perpetrators from using unpaid fines as economic leverage. Limiting suppression orders that allowed convicted rapists to remain anonymous. None of these individually transforms the system, but together they close a series of specific loopholes that people with something to hide had learned to use.

Good legislation of this kind is not complicated to identify. It is legislation that accurately diagnoses a mechanism of harm and then removes it, without creating significant new harms elsewhere. On that test, these reforms hold up. The good character provision is long overdue. Coercive control law catches what physical violence law missed. The discrimination protection addresses a real barrier with a proportionate remedy.

The Victorian Parliament should pass it intact.

Sources

Victorian Government — Labor Protects Victim-Survivors With Landmark New Laws

Frequently Asked Questions

What does Victoria's new coercive control law actually make illegal?
Victoria's legislation creates coercive control as a standalone criminal offence, meaning a pattern of behaviour — psychological manipulation, financial abuse, isolation, surveillance — can now be prosecuted without requiring physical violence. Previously, police and prosecutors could only act when violence produced visible evidence such as injuries.

Why are good character references being removed from family violence sentencing?
Good character references allowed perpetrators to use their public reputation — as a respected community member, coach, or volunteer — to materially reduce their sentence for family violence or sexual assault. Removing this means a perpetrator's social standing can no longer function as a legal discount for harm done in private.

How do the new discrimination protections help victim-survivors leaving violent relationships?
The laws make it unlawful for landlords and employers to discriminate against someone because of their family violence history, addressing one of the structural reasons people stay in violent relationships. A person fleeing violence who is denied housing or penalised at work now has a legal remedy.

Can a judge still consider a defendant's personal circumstances in family violence cases?
The reforms remove good character references specifically — the curated testimony of friends, colleagues, and community members — from sentencing in family violence and sexual offence cases. Whether other mitigating circumstances remain available will depend on the precise legislative text, which has been introduced but not yet passed.

Do these laws apply across Australia or only in Victoria?
These are Victorian state laws, introduced to the Victorian Parliament in August 2026. Other Australian jurisdictions have their own family violence legislation, and coercive control laws are at different stages of introduction in different states and territories.