By Adam Carey
It’s just before 10am at Werribee Magistrates’ Court, and the waiting rooms are crowded with people awaiting their scheduled appearance on the family violence list. Nervous energy crackles in the air.
The two-storey court building has an antiquated arrangement for family violence matters: alleged offenders wait downstairs; victims wait upstairs, outside the courtroom where family violence matters are heard. Close encounters are common.
Rebecca Zivic and Caitlin Caruana, of Westjustice, stand outside the Werribee Magistrates’ Court.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
“There’s times where AFMs [affected family members] are having to walk past the perpetrator, or the perpetrator’s walking past them. That can be a serious safety concern,” says Rebecca Zivic, legal administrator with Westjustice, the publicly funded community legal centre for Melbourne’s western suburbs.
Werribee Magistrates Court is cramped and ageing. It was built “when Werribee was a country town”, says Westjustice director Caitlin Caruana.
It should be winding down within weeks. Two kilometres east, the finishing touches are being applied to the $272 million Wyndham Law Courts, Victoria’s newest and second-largest court precinct, which was due to open in March before the opening date was delayed indefinitely last year, due to a lack of operational funding from the state government.
Wyndham’s new courts have been built on the old state research farm, since branded the East Werribee Employment Precinct but still largely empty paddocks. It will have 13 courtrooms, four hearing rooms and three mediation suites. Among the cases to be heard in the building are hearings in the Magistrates’ Court, the Children’s Court and the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
“It’s a real shame that we have to continue operating in these old courts that are no longer fit for purpose when there is a state-of-the-art court down the road ready to open,” Caruana says.
Inside the current court, about 50 intervention order matters are listed on the day The Age visits. Westjustice’s lawyers are already at capacity, and they will not be able to meet every request for free legal advice.
Magistrate Costas Kilias is doing his best to maintain a tone of humanity and humour inside his courtroom, even when having to raise his voice over the noise of the clerk’s photocopier below his bench.
“You’re going to have a complete and full no-contact order. He’ll be out of the house,” Kilias reassures a silently weeping woman who is, her lawyer says, in court for the first time, seeking an intervention order against her husband.
“This order is not about who gets to see the kids, etc. This order is about keeping you and the children safe. You can then work out your stuff under the umbrella of whatever protection we can give you. We keep the rain away so you can do your work,” Kilias says, with the dramatic flair of a former film actor.
But the rain is more like a flood. The next applicant – a woman seeking an order to stop her ex-partner contacting her and their 13-year-old daughter – has her case adjourned to July 2.
“Apparently, that’s our next available date for family violence matters,” Kilias says.
Werribee Magistrates’ Court services a catchment of more than 300,000 people. The population of the City of Wyndham, in Melbourne’s outer south-west, has grown by more than a third in the past decade.
Crime statistics reveal an even steeper rise in many key indicators of social stress. Annual reported family violence incidents in Wyndham rose 60 per cent between 2018 and 2023; youth-related crime rose 46.1 per cent in the same period; alcohol and drug offences rose 28.3 per cent.
Wyndham’s rapid growth and rising crime threaten to overwhelm local social support services.
Westjustice commissioned consultancy firm EY to complete “service mapping” for Wyndham and found a stark shortfall in mental health support and family violence counselling.
“Many of the services aligned with the planned Wyndham Law Court specialist therapeutic lists are in very short supply across the [local government area], are oversubscribed or are difficult to access,” EY’s report found.
“In these circumstances, it may be considered that Wyndham Law Court users are being set up to fail.”
Caruana says there had been high hopes the new law courts would ease the burden.
The precinct will have several “therapeutic court lists” focused on rehabilitation, including a specialist family violence court.
“These will be the first Drug, Koori and ARC [Assessment and Referral] courts in the west. So it’s actually really exciting and well overdue,” Caruana says.
But one proposed feature of the law courts has been dropped.
The $272 million Wyndham Law Courts precinct was due to open in March, but the date has been pushed back indefinitely.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
Early plans included an “integrated support services hub”, envisioned as a one-stop shop for “alcohol and other drugs services, mental health services, housing and homelessness services, youth services, financial counselling services, men’s behaviour change services, gamblers’ help services, legal advice”.
The hub would have been built on-site, giving offenders convenient access to support aimed at reducing recidivism and crime.
It was modelled on a similar neighbourhood justice centre in Collingwood, which had been found to have reduced reoffending, according to a 2018 discussion paper prepared for the Department of Environment, Land, Water and Planning.
“The integrated justice service system in Wyndham aims to reduce the risk of offending in the community by reducing the incidence of homelessness, substance abuse and mental illness; and by helping individuals to address these factors that increase their risk of ongoing involvement in the justice system,” the paper said.
Caruana said without the hub, the law courts risked becoming a revolving door for offenders.
“It’s only so valuable if the overburdened drug and alcohol services in Wyndham can’t actually cope with all the people that the courts will be sending them for mandated counselling.”
A state government spokesperson did not provide an opening date for the Wyndham Law Courts, nor provide details on what support services the precinct might have.
“Construction is nearing completion on the transformational Wyndham Law Courts – which is an enormous investment for the west, designed with the needs of the community at the heart,” the spokesperson said.
“Once construction is complete, we will work closely with Court Services Victoria to finalise the operational details and the community will be kept informed along the way.”
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