THE ASHES OF JUSTICE ACT
A Unified National Law to Protect ALL Survivors of Abuse, Violence, Neglect, and Vulnerability in Australia
 
At its core, the Ashes of Justice Act is built on a simple principle: a society should be judged by how it protects its most vulnerable. Children, survivors of abuse, people with disabilities, and those navigating mental health or medical systems deserve safeguards that prevent harm before it occurs.

Too often, systems designed to protect have instead prioritised institutional reputation, legal technicalities, or procedural barriers over human safety. Survivors are left fighting systems that should have defended them. This proposal seeks to change that.

The Ashes of Justice Act calls for a justice and safeguarding framework where prevention, accountability, and survivor protection are NOT optional responses after tragedy - but the foundation of how our systems operate.


The Issue
Across Australia, survivors of abuse, violence, neglect and institutional harm continue to fall through gaps in the legal system.

Existing protections are fragmented across multiple laws, agencies and jurisdictions. Justice often depends on legal definitions, procedural rules, and whether a survivor fits into narrow categories.

As a result:
• serious crimes against children can be downgraded through outdated legal charges
• abuse of vulnerable people is inconsistently recognised
• survivors face barriers to justice because of strict procedural time limits
• institutions avoid accountability for systemic harm
• medical systems can cause harm through coercive practices or over-medication
• online spaces used by children remain accessible to known offenders

These failures create environments where harm is minimised, responsibility is deflected, and survivors are left to navigate complex systems alone.

Australia needs a unified legal framework that prioritises prevention, accountability and survivor protection.
The Ashes of Justice Act is a survivor-led proposal designed to close these systemic gaps.
 
Petition Summary - What the Ashes of Justice Act Does
The Ashes of Justice Act is a survivor-led national reform to fix the gaps that allow abuse, violence, neglect, and institutional harm to continue across Australia.
Right now, Australia’s laws operate in fragments. Protection depends on labels, timelines, legal knowledge, and whether a survivor “fits” into the right category. This leaves children, disabled people, survivors of sexual and domestic violence, and people harmed by systems unprotected.
This petition calls for one unified national law that puts survivor safety first.
At its core, the Ashes of Justice Act would:
• Unify existing laws (Daniel’s Law, Clare’s Law, Chloe’s Law, Tia’s Law, Lauren’s Law) into one clear, accessible national framework
 
• Abolish “Unlawful Carnal Knowledge”, recognising that rape is rape - nothing less
 
• Create a national offender and safeguarding registry linking police, courts, hospitals, disability services, child safety, and corrections
 
• Criminalise abuse of vulnerability, replacing discriminatory language like “abuse of weakness” and holding individuals and institutions accountable
 
• Strengthen protections for disabled and institutionalised people, including mandatory investigations, protection orders, and survivor identity safeguards
 
• Mandate treatment and long-term risk reduction for offenders of abusive/violent crimes including DV, emotional manipulation/abuse, coercive control and rape and stalking, with escalation to lifelong protection where risk continues

• Introduce national safeguards against institutional over-medication, ensuring psychiatric medications are not used as behavioural control in children, disabled people or vulnerable individuals without proper assessment, review and support alternatives

• Address digital grooming and online exploitation, including court-ordered restrictions on internet and social media access for convicted child-sex offenders and enhanced monitoring of high-risk individuals
 
• End medical neglect and coercive practices, particularly in eating disorder treatment and institutional healthcare
 
• Protect survivors’ legal rights, including the ability to appeal when trauma, disability, or institutional control prevented earlier action
 
• Recognise economic abuse, including child support neglect that causes poverty, homelessness, or lifelong harm
 
• Ensure survivor participation, safety, and dignity at every stage

This Act is not about punishment alone.

It is about prevention, accountability, transparency, and ensuring that no survivor is left unprotected because the system was easier to defend than to fix.

The Ashes of Justice Act shifts Australia’s response to abuse from reactive punishment to proactive protection.
It recognises that preventing harm and protecting survivors must be the central purpose of the justice system.

Why This Petition Matters
I am creating this very long petition because the systems meant to protect people like me failed - repeatedly, and at every stage of my life.
As a child, I did not have the education, language, capacity, or power to understand what was being done to me, nor the ability to stop it. I survived child abuse, child sexual assault (including child-on-child abuse), domestic violence, homelessness, and prolonged harm inflicted not only by individuals, but by institutions that were legally and morally obligated to protect me.
My mother endured more than a decade of domestic violence across multiple relationships. I later became a survivor of domestic violence myself. The cycle was not broken.. because the system failed to intervene in any meaningful or lasting way.
My best friend should still be alive. Her death followed systemic failures in healthcare and protection systems designed to save lives. Her death was preventable. She is not the only one. I almost died 3 times due to the neglect, lack of education, lack of awareness around complex or chronic diseases or misunderstood diagnoses, within the medical health care system from 2021-2024.. 

What followed for me was decades of retraumatisation:
• courts that downgraded serious crimes,
• hospitals that punished rather than treated,
• Disability and protection systems that failed to act,
• And government bodies that deflected responsibility instead of ensuring accountability.

Survivors were scrutinised.
Systems were protected.

This petition exists because survivors should not need legal expertise, privilege, or extraordinary resilience to be safe.

Justice should not depend on how a crime is labelled, whether a survivor was a child or disabled, or whether abuse fits into narrow legal categories.

The government owes survivors an apology - not the other way around.

The Ashes of Justice Act is not symbolic reform. It is a survivor-led framework for real protection, accountability, and prevention - so what happened to us does not continue to happen to others.

This Act is about safety.
It is about dignity.
It is about ensuring harm is neither minimised nor repeated.
The full details of each reform are outlined below.
 
 

WHAT We Are Calling For
We, the undersigned, call on the Australian Government to urgently create and implement the ASHES OF JUSTICE ACT - a unified national legal framework protecting all survivors, including:
children
People with disabilities
institutionalised people
survivors of sexual and domestic violence
survivors of medical neglect
people harmed through abuse of vulnerability and power.

 Australia’s current protections - including Daniel’s Law and Clare’s Law - operate in isolation. Fragmented systems create gaps that offenders and institutions exploit.
Ashes of Justice unifies these protections into one accessible, enforceable national system, incorporating:
Daniel’s Law
Clare’s Law
Chloe’s Law
Tia’s Law
Lauren’s Law

 
 
Core Reforms of the Ashes of Justice Act
1. Unified National Offender & Safeguarding Registry
A single national system covering:
• sexual offences
• domestic and coercive control
• abuse of vulnerability
• institutional abuse and neglect
Automatically integrated across police, courts, hospitals, child safety, disability services, NDIS, corrections, and aged care.

2. Abolition of “Unlawful Carnal Knowledge” (UCK)
UCK functions as the legal downgrading of child rape.
This Act mandates:
• abolition of UCK as a charge
• automatic reclassification as sexual assault/rape
• equal sentencing standards
• minimum non-parole periods for aggravated child sexual crimes
Rape is rape. Nothing less.
 
3. Chloe’s Law - Protection for Disabled & Institutionalised Survivors
Chloe’s Law recognises abuse, exploitation, coercion, and neglect of disabled or vulnerable people as aggravated offences.
It mandates:
• trauma-informed investigations
• automatic cross-system reporting
• accountability for carers, hospitals, support workers, police, CPS, NDIS providers, and government agencies
• permanent protection orders where required
• survivor identity protection

3.1 Survivor Participation & Protection Rights
Including:
• testimony without offender presence
• notification of parole or release
• identity protection
• funded relocation where safety requires
• ongoing access to offender monitoring

3.2 Mandatory Treatment & Risk Reduction (Chloe’s Law)
All offenders convicted of sexual offences, abuse of vulnerability, coercive control, or exploitation of disabled or dependent persons must undergo mandatory forensic psychiatric and psychological assessment and treatment as a condition of sentencing, incarceration, parole, or supervision.

Treatment is not optional and not subject to offender consent.

This includes, at minimum:
• compulsory forensic psychology programs focused on consent, power, coercion, accountability, and victim impact
• compulsory psychiatric assessment for risk, impulse control, aggression, and sexual fixation
• mandatory specialist sexual behaviour treatment delivered by forensic sexual-health psychologists
• Risk-Based Biological & Neurological Interventions
For offenders who demonstrate:
• repeat sexual or violent offending
• escalation in severity or frequency
• predatory behaviour toward children, adolescents, or dependent persons
• fixation on age, vulnerability, or power imbalance
• lack of remorse or insight

The following must be applied, subject to independent medical oversight:
• pharmacological risk-reduction therapies, including testosterone-suppression or libido-modulating medication
• neurological interventions (e.g. TMS or equivalent evidence-based therapies)
• intensive long-term psychiatric management

Age & Pattern-Based Presumption
Where an offender is:
• aged 50 years or older, and
• has a history of sexual violence, domestic violence, or predatory sexual behaviour

There is a rebuttable legal presumption of elevated long-term risk, requiring:
• mandatory ongoing psychiatric treatment
• mandatory sexual-behaviour education
• mandatory biological risk-reduction therapy unless compelling medical contraindications exist
• Absence of imprisonment, suspended sentences, or prior leniency must not exempt an offender from these requirements.
Safeguards
• Decisions regarding type of intervention may be clinically informed
• Decisions regarding whether treatment occurs are determined by law
• Oversight is conducted by an independent Survivor Safety Commission
• Refusal or non-compliance results in loss of parole eligibility or re-incarceration
Escalation Provision:
Where an offender subject to Chloe’s Law demonstrates ongoing, escalating, or high-risk behaviour, the provisions of Lauren’s Law automatically apply.
Disability is not weakness.
Exploiting vulnerability is predatory conduct.

3.3 Economic Abuse, Child Support Neglect & State Accountability (Chloe’s Law)
Chloe’s Law recognises the deliberate refusal to provide financial support for a child as a form of economic abuse and abuse of vulnerability where such refusal contributes to poverty, housing insecurity, disability-related harm, or long-term disadvantage.

This provision applies where:
• a parent or legal guardian deliberately evades or refuses child support obligations
• shared-care arrangements are used to avoid financial responsibility
• non-payment contributes to homelessness, deprivation, disability-related harm, or lifelong disadvantage
• the child and/or primary carer is disabled, chronically ill, or otherwise vulnerable
• Mandatory Financial Consequences

Where child support is unlawfully withheld or evaded:
• the offending parent must repay no less than double the total unpaid child support identified by the Australian Taxation Office or Child Support Agency
• financial penalties increase where non-payment is prolonged, intentional, or concealed
• Enhanced Protections for Disabled Children and Carers
• Where the affected child or primary carer is disabled, chronically ill, or neurodivergent:
• the conduct is classified as aggravated abuse of vulnerability
• enhanced financial penalties apply
• long-term harm and cumulative impact must be considered in restitution calculations
• Restitution for Lifelong Harm

Where non-payment of child support contributes to:
• homelessness
• intergenerational poverty
• lifelong disability impacts
• reduced access to healthcare, education, or stability
 

The offending parent is liable for mandatory restitution, including:
• a minimum compensation payment of $15,000 per affected child and primary carer,
• with higher amounts required where harm is severe, prolonged, or compounded
• Institutional Accountability & Oversight

Where government agencies fail to identify, enforce, or act upon systemic child support neglect:
• an independent investigation must be initiated
• patterns of agency failure must be assessed for broader systemic harm
• findings may be escalated to an independent national oversight body
• Where systemic failures disproportionately impact disabled families, single parents, or vulnerable households, this constitutes institutional abuse of vulnerability.
• No Limitation Based on Time
• Historical non-payment and agency failures may be investigated regardless of elapsed time where harm is ongoing or lifelong.

Economic neglect of children is not a private matter.
It is a form of abuse with lifelong consequences.

3.4 Psychiatric Safeguards & Protection from Institutional Over-Medication
Psychiatric medication must never be used as a substitute for support or as a tool of behavioural containment for vulnerable individuals.

Where psychiatric medications are prescribed to children, disabled people, or institutionalised individuals, the following safeguards must apply:
• mandatory multidisciplinary assessment prior to prescribing antipsychotic medication
• screening for trauma, neurodevelopmental disability, and physical health conditions
• clear documentation when medications are prescribed off-label
• compulsory medication review at least every 3 months
• requirement that psychosocial, disability, family or therapeutic supports are offered alongside medication

Where institutional misuse of psychiatric medication results in harm, independent investigation must occur under Chloe’s Law.

No child or vulnerable person should be chemically controlled in place of receiving appropriate care, diagnosis, or support.

3.5 Digital Grooming & Online Exploitation Prevention
Where individuals are convicted of child sexual offences or organised exploitation crimes, courts may impose restrictions on digital access to protect children and vulnerable people.

These measures may include:
• restrictions on internet or social media access
• bans from platforms primarily used by minors
• monitored or supervised digital communication
• electronic monitoring where risk assessments support it

Organised online exploitation networks and distribution of abuse material involving children/person are classified as aggravated offences. 

Child protection must prioritise restricting offenders rather than removing children from spaces used for education, social connection, and community.
 
3.6 Abuse-of-Vulnerability Reform
This Act replaces the discriminatory term “abuse of weakness” with abuse of vulnerability, recognising vulnerability arising from disability, illness, trauma, homelessness, age, neurodivergence, poverty, institutional dependence, or government-created conditions.

The reform includes:
• criminal liability for exploiting vulnerability
• automatic removal from positions of power
• permanent bans from working with vulnerable populations
• proportional sentencing based on harm
• funded legal and psychological support for survivors
• compensation where systemic failures result in death

This applies to individuals and institutions, including NDIS providers and the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission.
 
3.7 Appeal Override & Justice Access Safeguard
Where a survivor was a child, disabled, unwell, traumatised, institutionally controlled, or otherwise unable to understand or act on their legal rights:
• appeal time limits must not apply
• time limits are suspended where later evidence of error, illegality, or rights breaches emerges
• survivors are provided state-funded independent legal representation
• reviews must be external to the original court
Procedural rules must never be used to shield injustice.

 
4. Lauren’s Law - Lifelong Protection from Extreme Violence
For offenders demonstrating extreme violence, repeat offending, or lack of remorse:
• life imprisonment without parole where warranted
• mandatory psychiatric and neurological treatment
• permanent protection orders
• automatic reincarceration for breaches
• lifelong survivor notification and support
 
5. Tia’s Law - Ending Medical Neglect in Eating Disorder Treatment
This section reflects both lived experiences shared by survivors (including my best friend who let me know what she experienced before her life was cut short by a uneducated system), my lived experience and systemic issues documented in eating disorder treatment environments.

Mandates:
• prohibition of coercive feeding except in genuine emergencies
• bans on restraint and intimidation
• trauma-informed, neurodivergent-inclusive care
• hospital accountability including compensation, public or formal apology and training on how to avoid situations where breaches of United Nations Declaration of Human Rights have occured.
• Removal of arbitrary limitations on discrimination and mistreatment complaints, including the abolition of strict time limits (e.g. 12–24 months) for lodging complaints, removal of requirements to prove “substantial” impairment, and formal recognition of subtle, cumulative, and systemic discrimination (including stigma, coercion, exclusion, and institutional practices), acknowledging that trauma, disability, illness, and fear of retaliation frequently delay disclosure.
• escalation pathways for systemic abuse
Treatment must never become trauma.

 
 
What We Ask Parliament to Do
We call on the Australian Government to:
• Draft and introduce the Ashes of Justice Act
• Mandate national adoption across all states and territories
• Abolish UCK and enforce equal sentencing
• Criminalise abuse of vulnerability
• Enforce institutional accountability, including within the NDIS and NDIS QSC
• Establish the unified national registry
• Guarantee trauma-informed, human-rights-based systems
• Ensure lifelong protection for survivors
 
Why Your Signature Matters
Survivors should not have to fight the systems meant to protect them.
We were innocent.
We never asked to be harmed.
Justice should not require years of trauma, legal knowledge, or personal sacrifice.
 
 
Your signature says:
• survivors deserve justice
• institutions must be accountable
• protection must be universal
• reform must happen now
Sign and share.

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