SUBMISSION
ANROWS Submission: Statutory review of the coercive control reform (NSW)
ANROWS provided a submission to the NSW Department of Communities and Justice Statutory review of the coercive control reform.
NSW’s coercive control offence came into effect on 1 July 2024. The review examines whether the law is working as intended to strengthen the criminal justice system response while supporting victim-survivor safety.
ANROWS recommends that the NSW Department of Communities and Justice:
- Maintain the current elements of the offence until further evaluation clearly separates the effects of the offence’s design from how it’s implemented. Low charge numbers alone provide insufficient evidence for change.
- Strengthen monitoring and evaluation across the entire justice process, including community-governed approaches and assessment of how the broader domestic abuse framework is being applied.
- Strengthen monitoring of misidentification by using a broader range of evidence, including existing NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research (BOCSAR) indicators, relationship histories and qualitative case reviews.
- Measure misidentification in coercive control cases, including cases where police take legal action against both partners over the same event and where both partners have apprehended domestic violence orders (ADVOs) made against them in relation to each other.
- Ensure future monitoring assesses the full pattern and cumulative impact of coercive control, including social isolation, technology-facilitated monitoring and abuse, and financial abuse.
- Invest in safeguards and alternatives alongside law reform, including community-led services, co-designed community education and training designed and delivered with Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations.
- Ensure Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples lead and govern monitoring of the law’s impacts on their communities. Aboriginal women and Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations should design, interpret and oversee this work.
- Strengthen the detection of cases in which culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) and migrant women are wrongly identified as perpetrators. Monitoring needs to report relevant indicators and recognise the increased risks created by language and migration-related barriers.
- Improve monitoring of coercive control affecting LGBTIQA+ people, including identity-based coercion and misidentification, by developing measures that go beyond the current same-sex relationship indicators.
- Retain the broad definition of domestic abuse in section 6A of the Crimes (Domestic and Personal Violence) Act 2007 (NSW), which recognises both single acts and patterns of behaviour over time. Prioritise evaluating how the definition is applied across policing, courts and frontline services, and whether it should play a stronger role within the broader legal framework.
This submission will be of interest to policymakers, legal and justice system professionals, health and mental health practitioners, researchers, and organisations working across domestic, family and sexual violence.
Download the full submission to explore the evidence and recommendations in detail.
Suggested citation
Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety. (2026) Re: Statutory review of the coercive control reform (NSW) [Submission no. 3]. ANROWS.