Taking bail decisions out of the hands of registrars and trialling specialist domestic violence courts, like those used on Queensland’s Gold Coast, are among the ideas on the table in two reviews launched on Wednesday.
The announcements follow the death of mother Molly Ticehurst, 28, whose body was found inside her home at Forbes, in central-western NSW, on Monday.
Her former partner, accused of raping and stalking her in the months before the killing, has been charged with her murder.
The 29-year-old had been granted bail two weeks earlier by a weekend registration running to a country court.
The NSW government has launched reviews of the bail decision and the broader system. (Dan Himbrechts/AAP PHOTOS)
“The system obviously failed Molly and the status quo is not going to work,” Premier Chris Minns told reporters.
Mr Minns said his government wanted to work with lower courts on the possibility of requiring all weekend bail applications to be put before a magistrate, even if that required an audiovisual link to a Sydney courthouse.
“These are weighty and important decisions for magistrates to be made in obviously short periods of time,” he said.
The Crown advocate will be tasked to report on the bail decision by May 31.
A standing bail advisory panel that includes police, prosecutors and legal groups will also be asked to delve into potential gaps in the Bail Act.
Women’s Safety Commissioner Hannah Tonkin will be included in that work with a view to potentially having her permanently on the panel.
Daniel Billings, 29, was on bail at the time of the killing, facing three counts of sexual intercourse without consent and four charges of stalking and intimidating Ms Ticehurst in recent months.
Forbes senior Phyllis Miller said women living in rural and regional NSW were not as safe as their urban counterparts.
“We cannot hide like you can in the metropolitan areas…everyone knows everyone and they know where everyone is,” she told ABC TV.
“How can you allow someone to dance without doing some assessment of the harm they could cause?”
Federal Women’s Minister Katy Gallagher said the problem was deeper than finding more resources and funding for support services, and men needed to play a greater role in working to keep women safe.
“This is a crisis in this country and women don’t feel safe,” she told ABC radio.
Ms Ticehurst’s father, Tony, said Billings should have been behind bars and someone must be held responsible for his death.
“If they’d have kept him in jail as the police wanted, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” he told Nine on Tuesday.
During a brief mention of the murder case in Orange Local Court on Tuesday, Billings did not apply for and was refused bail.
He is due to appear in Parkes Local Court on June 20.
With the death of a Victorian woman on Wednesday, 26 women have died from gender-based violence in Australia this year.
All but two have been in the hands of men, according to violence prevention organization Our Watch.
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National Sexual Abuse and Redress Support Service 1800 211 028
