Stalking law: 'Shouldn't be up to victims to prove they were scared'

A proposed law change to make stalking illegal is a great step forward, a victims' advocate says.

New details have been revealed about planned changes to make stalking illegal.

Ruth Money told Morning Report it was a good move but needed to be refined.

"It's a great step forward to acknowledge that this is a serious behaviour that goes on in our community."

But the list of behaviours that defined what constituted stalking needed to be future-proofed, she said.

"There's a little bit of work to do in terms of the list of behaviours... technology changes every day."

Money also believed two instances in 12 months, rather than three, should be the level needed.

"We need to really make sure we aren't putting the onus on the victim to prove how scared they were.

"What it should be is 'would a reasonable person be fearful of this behaviour'."

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith told Morning Report stalking would include loitering, following someone, recording, making recordings and turning up where someone was.

"Basically creating that fear and intimidation."

He said getting the definition right and making any changes would be done through the select committee.

"The message we want to send is that stalking, as defined, is not tolerated."

There had been calls to make stalking illegal for some time, and the government was moving forward with that as part of its attempts to reduce the number of victims of crime, Goldsmith said.

The Criminal Bar Association said the proposed changes were long overdue. Vice president Sumudu Thode said at present, some aspects of stalking were covered in different laws.

"There's all these different legislation that could have applied, but it didn't directly apply, which makes it harder to investigate. But now it's under the Family Violence Act - it's defined, it's going to be an offence."

Thode hoped more resources were set to be put into investigating stalking.

Alison Towns of the Coalition for Safety of Women and Children told Midday Report she was looking forward to seeing the bill.

"I'm happy with some of it, I'm really happy it looks like it hopefully will be future-proofed. They're talking of a pattern of behaviour which is really good, because one act might appear quite trivial, but when it's seen in the context of the behaviour of the stalker, it has a totally different meaning, so it's important to look at it as a pattern of behaviour.

"I'm also kind of really keen that we cover a range of behaviours - so the full range of stalking behaviours. I'm not entirely sure that's going to happen just yet."

Towns said stalking consisted of a range of behaviours - including surveillance, unwanted contact, spreading false information and threats.

"I'm not convinced that they're going to include threats in there… and threats are very much a part of stalking. It may be that they're considering threats elsewhere in the Crimes Act and don't need to be in this stalking legislation, but they're so much a part of what is stalking that I think they need to be included."

There was not good data on how common stalking is, Towns said, because it had not been collected. But overseas data suggested "between 15 and 20 percent of women are stalked and between five and 10 percent of men".

"People from indigenous cultures are stalked much more than others."

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