Queensland coercive control laws: a drafting problem

An update to this article

We first published this piece in March 2024, when the amending legislation had passed but had not commenced. The offence commenced on 26 May 2025 and now applies. The affirmative consent amendments in the same package of reforms also commenced during 2024.

The concerns we raised then have not been resolved by commencement. If anything they matter more now, because the provisions are being applied. We have updated the article to reflect the current position.

Why we are critical of the drafting

To be clear at the outset: we are not arguing against the objective. Sustained patterns of control in intimate relationships cause serious harm and have historically fallen between the cracks of the criminal law. Queensland joined other Australian states in addressing that.

Our concern is the drafting. As written, the provisions capture a wide range of ordinary, lawful and common conduct in personal relationships. Key terms are either undefined or defined so broadly that they carry almost no limiting work. That leaves the boundaries of the offence to be set by prosecutorial discretion and, eventually, by the courts.

Consent, and a problem in the sexual offence amendments

This point sits slightly outside coercive control, but it came through in the same reform package and warrants a mention.

The definition of consent for sexual offences now provides, among many other things, that a person does not consent if they participate because of force, a fear of force, harm of any type, or a fear of harm of any type, whether to that person or to someone else, or to an animal or property. It does not matter when the force, harm or conduct giving rise to the fear occurred, or whether it was a single incident or part of an ongoing pattern.

The listed examples of harm include economic or financial harm, reputational harm, harm to family, cultural or community relationships, harm to employment, domestic violence involving psychological abuse or harm to mental health, and sexual harassment.

At first glance that reads as unobjectionable. Nobody should consent to a sexual act out of fear of harm.

The difficulty is that the source of the feared harm does not have to be the other participant.

A worked example

Take a hypothetical couple, Joe and Mary. Both come from conservative families. They married at 19 and are now 23. Mary has fallen out of love with Joe and has not told him. So far as Joe knows, the marriage is fine. Mary does not dislike Joe and feels guilty about her change of feelings. She continues to have sex with him because she sees it as part of being a wife, and because she fears that if she declines he will ask why, that word will get back to their families, and that her reputation and her relationship with her parents will suffer.

Mary is participating because of a fear of reputational harm and harm to family relationships. On the words of the provision, she has not consented. Joe, who knows none of this, has committed an offence.

That is not a scenario the reform was aimed at. It is a scenario the words plainly cover.

The coercive control offence

To commit the offence of coercive control, the prosecution must establish that:

1. you were in a domestic relationship with the other person;
2. you engaged in a course of conduct consisting of domestic violence on more than one occasion;
3. you intended that conduct to coerce or control the other person; and
4. the course of conduct would be reasonably likely to cause the other person harm.

"Harm" is defined to mean any detrimental effect on the person’s physical, emotional, financial, psychological or mental wellbeing, whether temporary or permanent. That is about as wide as a definition can be drawn. Almost any negative reaction satisfies it.

One of the many ways conduct becomes domestic violence for this purpose is emotional or psychological abuse, defined as behaviour towards another person that torments, intimidates, harasses or degrades them. The examples given include interfering with a person’s ability to access or communicate with friends, family or support services, by restricting access to any means of communication or otherwise.

Example: cutting off contact with an ex

Joe and Mary are dating. Joe has an ex-partner, Suzie, with whom he remains friends. After a year, Mary learns that Joe cheated on her with Suzie about four months into the relationship. Mary tells Joe she will not sleep with him as punishment, and posts about the infidelity to their friends on social media to humiliate him. She then insists that Joe stop speaking to Suzie and block her from his phone and email, and says she will leave if he does not. Joe is upset and tells Mary he may become depressed if he cannot contact his friend.

Run that through the four elements:

• Mary and Joe are in a domestic relationship. Satisfied.
• Mary humiliated Joe publicly, which is capable of being emotional or psychological abuse, and then restricted his ability to contact a friend, which is expressly given as an example. That is two occasions.
• She intended to coerce him into ceasing contact with Suzie.
• Joe is reasonably likely to suffer harm to his emotional or psychological wellbeing, on the definition given.

There is a real prospect that Mary’s conduct meets the elements of the offence. Whether anybody would prosecute it is a different question, and that is precisely the problem.

Example: the family budget

Whoever controls the money in a household has significant influence over what the other can do. So can telling a partner to stop spending amount to an offence?

Joe and Mary are expecting their first child. Joe works out that the budget needs tightening. Mary has a weekly dinner with friends where they take turns paying for each other. Joe tells Mary that under the new budget she cannot keep going.

Economic abuse is a form of domestic violence for this purpose. It covers behaviour that is coercive, deceptive, or unreasonably controls another person in a way that denies them the economic or financial autonomy they would otherwise have had.

Joe is arguably being coercive. "Coerce" is defined elsewhere in the legislation, though not for the purposes of economic abuse, and there it means to compel or force a person to do or refrain from doing something. Telling Mary she cannot keep attending fits. Notably, the word "unreasonably" attaches to control, not to coercion, so coercion is captured whether it is reasonable or not.

He is also arguably controlling her spending, and the decision denies her the ability to make her own financial decisions. The only real question mark is whether the control is unreasonable, which requires the whole context to be examined.

Working through the elements again:

• They remain in an intimate relationship.
• Joe has arguably engaged in economic abuse, and has arguably isolated Mary from her friends. Two occasions.
• He intended to coerce her into not spending the money.
• Harm is reasonably likely, because on the definition given almost any negative effect qualifies.

So a man budgeting for the arrival of his first child may, on the words of the statute, have committed an offence carrying a maximum of 14 years.

Where this is likely to head

None of this is an argument against punishing genuinely abusive behaviour. It is an argument about drafting.

Broadly drafted legislation gets used in ways it was not designed for. We regularly see provisions weaponised by people seeking leverage against a former partner, or as a tactic in family law proceedings. We expect to see historically consensual arrangements recast as coercion.

The wider issue is that key terms do too little work. "Harm" is defined so broadly that it excludes almost nothing. "Control" is not defined at all. "Dominate" appears without explanation of how it differs from control. Courts have to interpret the legislation as written.

The result is that whether the offence operates sensibly depends heavily on charging decisions. That is a thin safeguard on which to hang a 14 year maximum.

If you are facing an allegation of coercive control, or you are concerned that conduct in your relationship may be characterised that way, speak to our coercive control team before you speak to police.