The federal government has committed to stopping a perpetrator of domestic abuse from being entitled to inherit their victim’s superannuation. One mother’s fight to raise awareness of the loophole has helped us get here. Federal Member for Swan, Zaneta Mascarenhas MP, shares more on the change.
As an Australian woman, I am sick and tired of the relentless news of violence against women. From the manosphere radicalising a generation of young men, to rising reports of sexua violence, to 56 women killed by violence so far this year.
These stories influence how women live their everyday lives. Second guessing our safety. We’ve learned not to run with headphones in, not to go alone to a Facebook Marketplace pickup, to cross the street if someone’s walking towards us at night.
We carry a daily burden of constant vigilance. Even Tanya Plibersek admitted last month that she still gets her keys out before walking to her car in a dark car park at night.
That admission came the same week Plibersek presented to Parliament, tabling the Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commission’s yearly report, that found sexual
violence at near-record highs and breaches of domestic violence orders on the rise.
Here in Western Australia, police pursued 20 per cent more people for family and domestic violence crimes year on year, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
It is a nonstop tirade of bad news, loud enough to drown out any progress. That’s exactly why a real win in the fight against domestic and family violence can get lost. But real progress should be recognised.
In this year’s national report, Commissioner Micaela Cronin reminds us that hope is a muscle, one we have to keep exercising. When the news feels this relentless, hope isn’t
naive. It’s what keeps us fighting for an Australia free from this violence.
Most advocates in this space know hope alone isn’t enough. What sustains the fight is real stories of change.
This week is one of them. The government has backed the overwhelming majority of recommendations from a parliamentary committee inquiry into financial abuse, supporting or supporting in principle 58 of the inquiry’s 61 recommendations.
Financial abuse, as the inquiry found, works by cutting off a victim’s access to their own money, blocking their ability to work or study, or creating debt that was never theirs. This results not only in the victim being economically dependent on their abuser but can lead to other forms of family and domestic violence.
This abuse rarely makes headlines, but a 2025 national survey by the Centre for Women’s Economic Safety found that one in eight women have been forced or pressured to hand a partner their savings or other assets. In most cases of financial abuse, the damage to victims goes unnoticed, which is why awareness within our systems, laws and communities can be lifesaving.
Julie Adams brought her daughter’s story to the inquiry, hoping it might spare other families what she went through. Julie told the inquiry that Molly experienced domestic and family violence in her marriage, including financial abuse.
Molly tried to leave her husband six times. She died by suicide in 2022, aged 22. She died without a will or a binding nomination on her super. This meant one person was entitled to her super payout: her husband, the man who Julie identified as Molly’s alleged abuser.
Julie shared her daughter’s story with the committee to shed light on a gap in the law most people never knew existed. Losing a child is devastating enough. For a mother to watch the man she holds responsible to then receive her daughter’s super is simply unconscionable.
That is why this government has committed to stopping a perpetrator of domestic or family abuse from being entitled to inherit their victim’s superannuation. With draft
legislation to be released later this year. Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino has described financial abuse as an “insidious form of coercive control,” and the changes announced this week go some way to closing the loophole that failed Molly.
I spoke with Julie this week. She told me she felt relieved, that after everything, this finally felt like good news. “It feels like a wrong has been righted,” she said.
“Molly wanted to make a difference in this world,” Julie said. She has. This is what it looks like to keep exercising that hope, proof that showing up, speaking out and refusing to stay silent can actually change something.
There are still more gaps in the system to close, and more women out there whose stories we haven’t heard yet. But Julie has shown us that hope needs something to build on, and that one mother’s determination can help change the law.