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23 Current Issues Crim. Just. 203 (2011-2012)
Victoria's New Homicide Laws: Provocative Reforms or More Stories of Women's 'Asking for It'?

handle is hein.journals/cicj23 and id is 207 raw text is: Victoria's New Homicide Laws: Provocative Reforms or More Stories of Women 'asking for it'? Danielle Tyson* Abstract The controversial partial defence of provocation has now been abolished in three Australian jurisdictions, including Victoria. Recent developments in Victorian case law would appear to suggest a continuation of 'excuses' for male anger and violence towards women that position the woman victim as to blame for her own death. This article considers that the 2005 abolition of provocation was only in part designed to redress the problem of victim-blame. The decision was accompanied by other key changes introduced into the Crimes Act 1958 (Vic) to make it easier for women who kill in the context of family violence to successfully claim self-defence and 'excessive self-defence' (defensive homicide). Drawing on recent developments in Victorian case law since the 2005 amendments, this article argues that the claim that provocation's victim-blaming narratives are being mobilised in the guise of other defences merits closer analysis. It also argues that provocation's critics must continue to expose the gendered (and raced) assumptions underlying the other defences to homicide, such as self-defence including manslaughter and the new offence of defensive homicide. Otherwise there is a risk that provocation's victim-blaming narratives could end up rewritten in such a way that support an argument for a reduction in culpability in cases where there is a history of violence against the woman victim, which is likely to result in claims that little has changed. Introduction In 2008, Western Australia became the third Australian state to pass legislation repealing the controversial rule of law that provocation reduces murder to manslaughter (Criminal Law Amendment (Homicide) Act 2008 (WA)). Tasmania abolished the provocation defence in 2003 (Criminal Code Amendment (Abolition of Defence of Provocation) Act 2003 (Tas)), as did Victoria in 2005 (Crimes (Homicide) Act 2005 (Vic)). The partial defence of provocation still operates in one of the common law and four of the code jurisdictions in Australia. In South Australia, the qualified defence of provocation is governed by the Danielle Tyson (PhD) is a lecturer in Criminology at Monash University (Danielle.Tyson@monash.edu). Earlier versions of this article were presented in 2010 as a Visiting Scholar at the Social and Legal Responses to Violence in Canada Research Unit, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, and at the 23rd Annual Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology (ANZSOC) Conference on Cross-border Domestic and Transnational Crime: Risks and Responses, Alice Springs, Australia, 28-30 September 2010. I would like to extend my sincere appreciation and thanks to the audiences who were present at these two presentations for taking an interest in my work and for their questions and feedback. I am also extremely grateful for the invaluable suggestions for revision and improvement from the two anonymous reviewers.

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