There is disquiet among lawyers and human rights concerning some of the recent DV law changes in Queensland. Providing for retrospectivity for instance. There is a reference here,

<Queensland Parliament passes new domestic violence laws granting victims 'special witness' status
updated 16 Oct 2015>

http://tinyurl.com/pu8ctt4

Didn't the High Court (Sir Garfield Barwick) rule against retrospectivity in law?

Roscop,

"No surprise that. If you do more of the same why should you expect a different result?"

Hasbeen,

"The girls club up here, called the Queensland government, have just announced new laws to remove the man from the house, so the little lady can have it all...."

Hmmm. I'm trying to fit your laments into my own family's scenario when I was a wee child.

My father came from a reasonably well to do family - North Shore people - Import/Export business.

His father died shortly after my mum & dad were married. After the money came through, the family spent the next decade merrily going through it.

By the time my brother and I came along, it was all gone - and dad I think never got used to not being with means. While we were still young, he developed a gambling habit.

In our tender years, it was usual for him to work all week and look like a fine upstanding man - and on Saturday he would hit the pub and the TAB. Saturday nights were hell all through my childhood. He would spend his week's wage on Saturday, come home drunk and grumpy, hit our mum - either because he was cross or because he wanted to force her to give him any money she had put aside from her part time job.

Eventually, when I was 8, after years of being beaten up by this man....she just walked out.

My brother ended up going with her, but out of spite dad sent me away, picked me up later and spent the next 7 years dragging me around the countryside - leaving me with people here and there and then picking me up again - still drinking and gambling and Saturday nights were still hell.

He only hit me once though. When I was about 12 he punched me in the jaw because I wouldn't argue back to him.

I left him when I was 15 (having not had "any" contact with mum for 7 years)...and finally made my way back to mum at 17.

There is the added complication surrounding Billy Gordon and opposition to the 'lock-out laws' the Palaszczuk government is trying to introduce,

http://tinyurl.com/lock-out-law

First things first.

The law regards all assaults as crimes of violence. It carefully defines each type of assault from common assault to murder. There are (ridiculously lenient and watered down further by judges and magistrates and parole boards) penalties for each of them. Defendants go to court on criminal indictments and have facilities for defending themselves.

Criminalising assault recognises inviolability of the person as a human right which a decent society and decent members of it will defend.

I couldn’t find one of the pretexts put up by the basher lobby and the gender warriors to draw attention away from actual domestic violence that would be an indictable offence, least of all a violent crime.

Can anyone else?

Poirot,

"Eventually, when I was 8, after years of being beaten up by this man....she just walked out." Would have there been any medical evidence of these beatings or where they merely very soft beatings?

I know if my father had hit my mother she would never have lived to see the next day...mind you she was so emotional when they had the most horrendous rows, with her continuous rants she showed absolutely no fear despite being far less stronger than my father...not the type of fear the domestic violence industry incessantly talks about. There were no curfews on the rows that I and my two siblings lived through...my mother kept them going all hours of the day and night and sometimes went on for days... I now understand why my father spent time at the local with "the boys".

Hi Poirot,

Good on you - I suppose it CAN be true, that whatever doesn't kill you will make you stronger :)

You have to keep going, to bear witness - and to do your best, just to spite the b@stards.

I don't have any real memory of my father, (just on memory of him beating up my step-father-to-be) I think he was gone by the time I was six or seven. He was a railway-man, and had been on the munitions train between Sydney and Brisbane throughout the War, so I guess turning to drink was to be expected. But it sounds like he got pretty violent with our mum. She sort of mellowed about him in much later years, but it was a bit late then.

Best wishes,

Joe