Katie Hogan

should result in better responses to complaints that involve these what might seem relatively low-level, innocuous behaviours.

The improvements that I see this new offence creating, firstly as I've said it's in the Crimes Act, it's in the most serious criminal act in our statutory regime. It has a five year maximum penalty so that in itself will make a big difference.

It also has this extended very wide definition of what constitutes stalking behaviour. Police are given the warning notice power, which is a new power that might nip this type of behaviour in the bud in hopefully the majority of cases.

The more serious nature of the crime may well motivate police to arrest and oppose bail or require strict bail conditions for people who are charged with an offence of this nature.

If people are charged with low, offences with low maximum penalties, and if they're unlikely to ever receive a sentence of imprisonment as a result of those low maximum penalties, it's very difficult to ask a court successfully to remand someone in custody.

or to remand them on very strict bail conditions, for example, electronic monitoring, the more serious the offence and the more likely a sentence of imprisonment at the end of the prosecution, the easier it will be to argue for those more strict restrictions on someone's liberty while they're being prosecuted.

The new offence incorporates new flow-on effects. If someone's convicted of a stalking offence, the court can order disposal of intimate visual recordings as a result of that conviction. And also anyone convicted of a stalking offence is unable to hold a firearms licence for 10 years. So there are these additional risk mitigation factors with the new offence.

The education factors should also flow on into sentencings of...

other offences, the more traditional offences, the assaults, the sexual violations, the indecent assaults, that have stalking type factors in the background. Those factors may well have been discounted by sentencing judges as irrelevant in the past, but the stalking offence that's now introduced should increase awareness and increase the recognition of those factors.

these offences in place, most of them with five-year maximum penalties, a couple with 10-year maximum penalties. Given our appalling family violence statistics, there must have been some pressure for some time for this to be acted on. I mentioned earlier that I have experience in the Harassment Act restraining order space where people can take positive steps to

to get in front of a prosecution and get a restraining order against someone to stop the harassment in its tracks. That jurisdiction is difficult. It can be slow. It can be costly. The district court

isn't as well prepared as, for example, the family court in dealing with these fraught interpersonal prevention measures. So the family court, for example, regularly grants protection orders under the Family Violence Act.

The restraining order regime in the district court is not used so regularly, so sometimes the registry is not very good at dealing with them efficiently or safely. And there has no doubt been agitation about that issue and the need to protect people for some time.