What were you doing for 12 years?: Mark Speakman’s bail reform call is too little, too late

Why is the former attorney-general of NSW calling for changes to the way alleged domestic violence assailants are treated, when he did little to fix the problem when he was in power?

There is a widely held belief among the political class that nothing good can be gained by agreeing to appear on the ABC’s Q&A program: no-one is watching, except if something goes wrong. Then everyone knows about it.

Liberal Leader Mark Speakman found this out the hard way this week, when he was taken to task by the mother of Mackenzie Anderson, who was allegedly murdered by a former partner in Newcastle in 2022.

From the audience, Tabitha Acret called for an inquest into the actions of judges and the judicial system in domestic violence offences.

She said she met with Speakman after her daughter’s alleged murder to call for change, only to be stonewalled by the then attorney-general.

“I met with Mark two years ago, and he was condescending and dismissive of me in the meeting when I did raise that there were major failures in the judicial system,” she said.

Tabitha Acret’s daughter, Newcastle mum MacKenzie Anderson, was fatally stabbed more than 20 times by her ex partner.

“Your words don’t mean a lot to me,” she told Speakman.

The Opposition leader this week called for tougher bail laws to better protect women from suffering at the hands of current or former partners.

Speakman proposed expanding the use of electronic monitoring bracelets for people bailed on “serious domestic violence offences”.

Alleged offenders bailed on domestic violence charges would be subject to the same monitoring conditions as those charged in relation to serious and organised crime under new proposed legislation

He also called for the government to make it harder for people charged with “serious personal violence” to get bail, and banning registrars from deciding those bail applications.

These are sensible suggestions; so why did Speakman fail to act when he was the man in charge?

It was Ms Anderson’s alleged murder that first dragged Speakman to the idea of electronic monitoring bracelets for domestic violence offenders who are also subject to apprehended violence orders.

That was back in March 2022.

As attorney-general, he took proposals to cabinet a few months later to toughen the “technical standards” for bracelets used on accused offenders released on bail, and a move to block convicted criminals heading for a prison term from being let out while awaiting sentencing.

As I wrote two years ago, Speakman had been forced to act in the face of public outrage.

He was caught flat-footed after a spate of bizarre bail decisions (including for an alleged drug kingpin, a bikie and an alleged rapist).

Speakman ordered the Bail Act Monitoring Group to review eight controversial decisions in November 2021. It took the then-attorney six months to propose any changes.

Three years on, these problems have not been fixed. It has taken the alleged murder of another young woman, 28-year old Molly Ticehurst, to reignite calls for change.

The funeral for Molly Ticehurst in Forbes on Thursday. Picture: Dane Millerd

This simply cannot keep happening. The reforms Speakman called for this week were needed years ago, when the Coalition had the power to act.

If Speakman thinks his proposals are good ideas now, why were they not good ideas during the 12 years the Coalition was in power?

“It is not as if we did nothing in the bail space,” Speakman told me.

He said the Coalition rolled out the “domestic violence electronic monitoring program” in 2016, and went to the 2023 election promising to boost that program with another 200 devices.

He said “now is the time” for more action, after the Bureau of Crime Statistics has found “very strong evidence” that electronic monitoring works to reduce reoffending.

“In the case of convicted offenders it has cut domestic violence offending by 39 per cent,” Speakman said.

With that attitude, the hapless Liberal Leader would need a government committee to tell him what to eat for lunch.

It is not just bail reforms on which Speakman has had an epiphany.

On Tuesday he called for police to be given new powers to detect and seize knives amid a push for NSW to adopt Queensland’s “Jack’s Law”.

The campaign is being led by Queensland parents whose teenage son was stabbed to death in 2019.

“We want to see ‘Jack’s Law’ rolled out in NSW; we want to see police have general metal detecting wanding powers to detect knives right across NSW,” Speakman said.

“Wanding will cut the carrying of knives, and that will reduce knife crime and ultimately save lives.”

The Coalition here had plenty of time to get tougher on knives but, again, was only forced into action in the wake of tragic events.

Of course, none of this excuses Premier Chris Minns from the responsibility of reform to stop violent men attacking women.

The Minns government will hear from experts and victim-survivors at a special cabinet meeting on Friday in an attempt to find a way to tackle a problem which has become, in the words of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, a “national crisis”.

However, this crisis did not spring up in the year since the last NSW election. Mark Speakman would do well to remember that before trying to score a political win.

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