Australia’s National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children, launched in 2010, has emphasised the need for integrated responses across government agencies, specialist domestic and family violence services and the justice system. This article presents an evaluation of an integrated, community-based domestic and family violence response service that uses a rare model of co-location in a police station, and assesses its suitability as a model service for the future. The evaluation reveals that there are many positive aspects of such co-location and the authors argue that this model should be more widely trialled in Australia.

This article uses postcolonial theory to analyze the dynamic convergence of two significant international trends in Aotearoa New Zealand: the movement for reparations for historical colonial injustices, and the economic reform process known as “structural adjustment,” or Reaganomics in the United States, which was intended to produce a competitive nation of individual entrepreneurs. It argues that analysis of the interrelationships of law, “race,” gender, and nation in this convergence illuminates the reproduction and reshaping of colonial tropes, or historical racial configurations produced through colonization, in these current trends. In Aotearoa New Zealand, claims by indigenous Maori activists for self‐determination and redress of historical injustices spurred the emergence of alternative imagined communities with the potential to transform the nation. These alternative visions for the nation were shaped and limited by the economic law and policy reform of structural adjustment, producing a new official nationalism of partnership, implemented in settlements of breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi 1840. These partnerships resulted in a new individual identity of Maori men as entrepreneurs in a competitive nation. It produced a symbolic alliance of men across race that silenced and erased Maori activists' demands, and the leadership of Maori women, at the national level. The high profile partnerships, the erasure of Maori women, and relentless media attention to claims of sexism in Maori culture reproduced colonial tropes with images of the “progress” of the partnerships “saving” brown women from the sexism of brown men and “traditional” cultures. In this complex process the settlements were rational exercises of agency by the new Maori entrepreneurs with the goal of achieving economic autonomy, and worked to silence and erase the leadership of Maori women at the national level, even while women continued to be recognized as leaders at the local and regional levels. This analysis suggests that realization of the transformative potential of claims for redress of historical racial injustices requires attention to the repetition of raced and gendered dynamics of imagined communities that shape and limit that potential.

This article analyses the parliamentary debates on the Civil Union Act 2004, which provides for legal recognition of same sex relationships, for stories of national identity.  A close reading of the parliamentary debates on the Act suggests that although the supporters and opponents of the legislation seemed to be worlds apart, many told similar stories about New Zealand as a nation, and citizens within that nation, emphasising similar values and aspirations.  Both sides told stories of citizens, of New Zealanders, as tolerant and fair, as forwarding-looking progressives who value stable long-term, committed relationships, warm loving communities for children, and strong families and family relationships.  Both sides generally saw marriage as a positive institution, a cornerstone of society and a building block for society and the nation.  While some talked of existing alternatives to marriage, such as de facto relationships, and there was some recognition that not all marriages are good ones, with a few notable exceptions, there was little mention of critiques of marriage as an institution and little or no positive mention of relationships outside of the paradigm of long-term committed, monogamous relationships.  Further, while there were arguments, reflecting a privatisation paradigm, that the Civil Union Act 2004 was not necessary since the rights and duties of same sex couples could be structured using the private law of contract and trusts (a claim that was debated), there was no suggestion that state recognition of marriage should be abolished, or that long-term heterosexual relationships should be structured through private law.

Australia is witnessing a political, social and cultural renaissance of public debate regarding violence against women, particularly in relation to domestic and family violence (DFV), sexual assault and sexual harassment. Women's voices calling for law reform are central to that renaissance, as they have been to feminist law reform dating back to nineteenth-century campaigns for property and suffrage rights. Although feminist research has explored women’s voices, speaking out and storytelling to highlight the exclusions and limitations of the legal and criminal justice systems in responding to women’s experience, less attention has been paid to how women's voices are elicited, received and listened to, and the forms of response they have received. We argue that three recent public inquiries in Australia reveal an urgent need for a victim-survivor-centred theory of listening to women’s voices in law reform seeking to address violence against women. We offer a nascent theory of a victim-survivor-centred approach grounded in openness, receptivity, attentiveness and responsiveness, and argue that in each of our case studies, law reform actors failed to adequately listen to women by silencing and refusing to listen to them; by hearing them but failing to be open, receptive and attentive; and by selectively hearing and resisting transformation. We argue that these inquiries signal an acute need for attention to the dynamics of listening in law reform processes, and conclude that a victim-survivor-centred theory of listening is a critical foundation for meaningful change to address violence against women.