Fifteen women have allegedly been murdered in Australia so far this year. Each death is a tragedy, but it is also a reminder of a broader crisis — one that isn’t only physical, but deeply systemic.
There has been a deep frustration at the 2025 Federal election campaign with strong criticisms of the lack of focus on gender based violence, as well as the challenges women face in Australia, from the major parties.
Today, Labor released its Building Australia’s Future commitment, promising women proposed changes to address several critical legal and policy blind spots.
This is what’s on the table for gender based violence:
- Preventing perpetrators from accessing a victim’s superannuation after death;
- Rewriting corporate law to stop abusers from fraudulently appointing victims as directors, then saddling them with company debt;
- Introducing “innocent spouse” provisions in the tax system to allow debts to be transferred back to the abuser who incurred them;
- Reforming the Director Penalty Notice scheme to factor in financial abuse;
- And exploring how social security debts racked up under coercion can be reversed or attributed back to the perpetrator.
While technical, these reforms can have real, tangible consequences for victim-survivors. They respond to repeated calls from the women’s safety sector and align with Australia’s national obligations under the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022–2032, which commits governments to embed safety across systems and hold perpetrators accountable. These policies are the sort of system-level interventions that we need to commit to if the national plan is to succeed.
Economic abuse isn’t a side effect of violence. It is violence. It isolates, controls, and forces women to stay.
Yet, for decades, our systems of tax, super, Centrelink, and corporate registries have been tacitly complicit in enabling these experiences.
This plan responds to the Parliamentary Inquiry into Financial Abuse, which has heard devastating accounts of how abusers use economic tools — not fists — to destroy lives. Things like victims made directors without consent. Victims forced into debt. Tax bills, ABNs, unpaid loans weaponised with bureaucratic ease.
In many cases, the system has helped perpetrators more than it has helped those trying to leave.
This plan recognises financial abuse is a deliberate tactic, used to entrap, punish and disempower. And it thrives when our tax, legal, and welfare systems are not designed to detect or disrupt it..
The planned legislative reform also intersects with broader priorities around economic equality. When victim-survivors are left with debts, damaged credit, or diminished retirement savings, their long-term financial security is compromised. That’s not just a gendered economic issue — it’s a national productivity issue, a safety issue, and a justice issue.
The work ahead will be complex. These reforms require cooperation across multiple portfolios — not just women’s safety, but also Treasury, ATO, ASIC, Services Australia, and the Attorney-General’s Department. It will require sustained consultation with victim-survivors and the sector to ensure efficacy and realise the intent to support victim-survivors. The end goal must always be for a more accountable, fair, and survivor-focused system.
These reforms are necessary and smart, but they are not sufficient as standalone policy items.
This announcement must be the start of a systemic overhaul, not a standalone fix. Because the cost of inaction is not abstract it is counted in the lives of women already lost.
We need to ensure that these ambitions are measurable within the action plan, including by scaling specialist financial support, embedding protections in all debt and credit systems, and ensuring that no one living in violence has to weigh up safety against their economic survival.
Because the effort to end gender-based violence in one generation, as the major parties have agreed to, will only succeed if we stop allowing our systems to be used as weapons.
If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, call 000.
If you need help and advice call 1800Respect on 1800 737 732, Men’s Referral Service on 1300 766 491 or Lifeline on 13 11 14.
***
Support Women’s Agenda! We are 100% independent and women-owned. We’re covering the Federal Election from the perspective of what matters to women, and always keeping the issues that matter for women on the daily agenda. Foundation memberships are just $5 a month.
Bonus: you’ll receive our weekly editor’s wrap of the key stories to know every Saturday.