Proposed Changes to Family, Personal and Sexual Violence Laws (ACT)
In December 2025, the ACT government proposed to make changes to a raft of laws affecting how family, personal and sexual violence are dealt with in the Territory. The changes, which are not yet passed, include abolishing the use of character evidence when a person is being sentenced for child sex offences. This page outlines the proposed changes and why they are being considered.
Legislation
The Family, Personal and Sexual Violence Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 contains the changes that are currently being considered.
If passed, it would amend a range of acts including the Evidence (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1991, the Family Violence Act 2016, the Personal Violence Act 2016 and the Crimes (Sentencing) Act 2005.
The proposed changes have been referred to the ACT Standing Committee on Legal Affairs. An inquiry is underway and the committee is due to report back to the legislative assembly on 1 April 2026.
Reasons for the proposed changes
The changes are being proposed to improve the way the ACT justice system responds to family, personal and sexual violence, by making laws clearer, more trauma‑informed, and better aligned with community expectations about safety and justice.
The Bill is intended to ensure victim‑survivors can access protections quickly and that the law treats serious violence appropriately.
The changes include modernising the definitions of family and sexual violence, introducing a temporary Family Violence Safety Notice scheme, and making various changes to evidence law.
Updated definitions
The bill contains updated and modernised definitions of sexual violence and family violence, which aim to capture modern understandings of patterns of interpersonal violence.
The updated definitions include a definition of ‘sexual offence’ that includes intimate image abuse offences such as distributing or threatening to distribute intimate images without consent.
They include a definition of ‘family violence’ that makes it clear that the conduct covered includes coercive control and other manipulative behaviours, as well as physical and sexual violence.
Family Violence Safety Notice (FVSN) scheme
The bill proposes to give police the power to issue short-term Family Violence Safety Notices, which would protect a person who fears violence from another person without the need to go to court.
This scheme is designed to provide faster protection to people who are at risk of violence, filling gaps in the existing system.
Evidence law changes
The bill also seeks to introduce changes to evidence rules and procedures surrounding sexual and family violence matters.
These include:
- introducing procedures to ensure more consistent handling of evidence in sexual and family violence matters
- amending evidence laws so that disclosures of abuse that are made to counsellors and psychologists remain privileged, unless the patient explicitly waives that privilege for the purpose of having material disclosed in evidence
- amending the law relating to the use of evidence of good character as a mitigating factor.
Character evidence
One of the most publicised changes that is being proposed is the abolition of ‘good character’ as a mitigating factor at sentencing in child sex matters.
As ACT law currently stands, good character can be relied on as a mitigating factor when a person is sentenced for any criminal offence. This means that a person may produce evidence of their prior ‘good character’ in the form of character references from people such as employers, colleagues, business associates, and friends to establish that the offending was ‘out of character’ and that they are a person of good standing in the community.
The proposed legislation would remove good character as a mitigating factor when a person is being sentenced in relation to child sex offences. If adopted, this change would mean that a person found guilty of child sex offences could not adduce character references in order to establish that they were otherwise a person of good standing.
This proposal follows campaigning by advocates and victim-survivors, who say that having their abuser described as ‘a person of good character’ in court is offensive and deeply re-traumatising.
Other states are also currently debating legislation that would limit the use of evidence of good character at sentencing, with many feeling that such evidence is irrelevant and outdated, and has a discriminatory effect – with certain social groups having greater access to professional networks and compelling character references than others.
The legislation is expected to be voted on later in 2026.
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Fernanda Dahlstrom is a writer, editor and lawyer. She holds a Bachelor of Laws (Latrobe University), a Graduate Diploma in Legal Practice (College of Law), a Bachelor of Arts (The University of Melbourne) and a Master of Arts (Deakin University). Fernanda practised law for eight years, working in criminal law, child protection and domestic violence law in the Northern Territory, and in family law in Queensland.