Rachel asked the Attorney-General if Victoria would investigate following suit with other Australian states, by banning positive character references for perpetrators charged with child sexual abuse.
Tuesday the 9th of December 2025,
Victorian Legislative Council
Rachel Payne (South-Eastern Metropolitan):
My adjournment matter is for the Attorney-General, and the action I seek is that they investigate banning good character references in child sexual abuse cases. The ACT became the first Australian jurisdiction to introduce a bill to ban good character references for sentencing perpetrators of child sexual abuse. This announcement follows the work of the Your Reference Ain’t Relevant campaign, co-founded by survivors of child sexual abuse Harrison James and Jarad Grice. This announcement also follows the 2024 Queensland District Court case of convicted sex offender Ashley Griffith, where good character references were taken into account. Ashley Griffith had pleaded guilty to 307 child abuse offences.
Rewards manipulative tactics
In introducing the bill, the ACT’s Attorney-General Tara Cheyne rightly described current laws as perverse. In effect current laws allowing good character references in cases of sexual offences against children reward the manipulative strategies perpetrators use. That is because predators do not just groom the people that they are trying to abuse, they groom their friends, their families and the community. Their good character helps them to facilitate child sexual abuse, yet it can currently act as a mitigating factor during sentencing. While judges can exercise discretion with regard to good character references, concerns remain that the current approach fails to consider the unique circumstances of child sexual abuse. Removing these kinds of references would deny predators the opportunity to be rewarded for these exploitative techniques. I understand the issue of good character references was discussed earlier this year at the Standing Council of Attorneys-General, and that there was interest in reforming the laws, particularly from Queensland and New South Wales.
Reform achieved in other states
Since this time, Queensland has limited the use of good character references during the sentencing of sex offenders to where it is relevant to the offender, to the offender’s prospects of rehabilitation or likelihood of reoffending. In New South Wales, the sentencing council handed its final report on the use of good character to mitigate sentences to the Attorney-General earlier this year. It is not yet clear whether Victoria is interested in joining New South Wales and Queensland to change the law when it comes to the use of character references, but this government has repeatedly demonstrated the courage to act to protect victim-survivors of child abuse, most recently by introducing a bill to expand the laws of vicarious liability for child abuse.
So I ask: will the Attorney-General investigate banning good character references in child sexual abuse cases?
Written response received 27th of January, 2026:
I thank the member for her question.
The government recognises the impacts of sexual violence on victim-survivors and is committed to addressing the challenges for victim-survivors in the criminal justice response to sexual offending.
The government has implemented a range of reforms to protect victim-survivors of child sexual abuse, including amendments to the Sentencing Act 1991 in 2018. These amendments acquit a recommendation from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse to prohibit the use of good character as a mitigating factor where that character assisted an offender in committing a sexual offence against a child. This reflects that good character should not be considered by courts in cases where the offender used their reputation to facilitate and mask grooming and abuse of a child.
Victorian courts also recognise the importance of safeguards around the use of character references in criminal proceedings. In 2024, the Supreme, County and Magistrates’ Courts updated their guidance material to require people providing character references to clearly demonstrate that they are aware of the specific offending the accused is being sentenced for.
As the member notes, further reforms to character references in child sexual offence cases have been discussed at a national level at the Standing Committee of Attorneys General. The New South Wales Sentencing Council has conducted a review of the use of good character in sentencing and provided a report to the New South Wales Attorney General, but that report has not yet been published. Reforms have been introduced in the Australian Capital Territory and implemented in Queensland, and I understand that the ‘Your Reference Ain’t Releva nt’ campaign submitted to a Queensland parliamentary committee that the reforms should be delayed until the completion of the review in New South Wales.
The government will carefully consider the findings and recommendations of the New South Wales Sentencing Council when the report is available and will continue to work closely with the Commonwealth and state partners through the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General to identify opportunities to coordinate on this issue while ensuring any reforms are suitable in the context of Victorian sentencing law.
The Hon. Sonya Kilkenny MP
Attorney-General
Related:
- Working with Children Checks – Rachel Payne
- Working with children check system needs national reform – Rachel Payne
- Transparency on initial review of Victoria’s working with children scheme – Rachel Payne
- No Exceptions for Abusers: Putting Survivors first on National Survivor’s Day 2025 – Rachel Payne
- A Day of Reckoning for Institutions that Enable the Abuse of Children – Rachel Payne
