Feminist Acts

When a relationship ends, coercive control doesn't end with it. 

Sometimes the perpetrator finds a new weapon. Often it's the legal system itself. 

They flood their ex-partner with paperwork, they book up every available lawyer in a rural town so there's no one left to represent the other side. They drag everything back to court. 

It's called systems abuse, and Australian courts don't currently recognise it as a form of family violence.

So how do we name something that hides behind legitimate legal processes? 

A recent law graduate rewrote the law to recognise systems abuse as family violence in its own right, with penalties attached.

In this episode, you'll learn:
  • What "systems abuse" is, and how perpetrators weaponise legal process to keep controlling ex-partners after separation
  • How someone can draft some of the most striking feminist legislation in this series, despite not identifying as a "feminist"
  • What changes when we teach law students to draft legislation, not just study it
Guests:
  • Clarrissa Carson, Law Graduate at AjG Family Law
Host:
  • Becky Batagol, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, Monash University

Take action today:

The book is free! The provisions are drafted. Take them to your parliament. Adapt them for another jurisdiction. Or start your own feminist legislation project.

Download the full book for free (open access):
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003372462/feminist-legislation-project-becky-batagol-heli-askola-jamie-walvisch-kate-seear

The Feminist Legislation Project: Rewriting Laws for Gender-Based Justice 
Edited By Becky Batagol, Kate Seear, Heli Askola, Jamie Walvisch
Published by Routledge
Copyright 2025

You can find out a little more about legal and other forms of systems abuse in the National Domestic and Family Violence Benchbook (2025). 

This benchbook is a resource for the education and training of judicial officers (judges) so as to promote best practice and improve consistency in judicial decision-making and court experiences for victims in cases involving domestic and family violence across Australia.  


Produced by Miniature

Creators and Guests

Host
Becky Batagol
Host
Kate Seear

What is Feminist Acts?

A how-to guide for MPs and policymakers to change the law to improve women’s lives.

Clarissa Carson:

I've never really thought about feminism or myself as a feminist. I think for me, labeling myself as a feminist doesn't feel congruent with who I am.

Becky Batagol:

Can you be a feminist if you don't call yourself a feminist? This is Feminist Acts. I'm Becky Batagol. In this episode, we speak to Clarissa Carson, a recent law graduate, about how her experience in law school shaped her career choices. We're also gonna hear about how the feminist legislation method that we use in this podcast can be transformative regardless of whether or not someone considers themselves to be a feminist or not.

Clarissa Carson:

Clarissa, welcome. It's great to have you here. Oh, thank you, Becky. It's great

Becky Batagol:

to be here. Clarissa, can you tell us a little bit about your studies and your work now?

Clarissa Carson:

Yeah, of course. I had my second child and decided I didn't want to go back to my previous life in business. And I went back to Monash and did the JD. I did that at full time, and I've enjoyed every moment of it. I had gone back with the intention to do family law, but having a business background, I was a little bit unsure about whether or not I should leverage off my knowledge in commercial business or really jump into something that might scare me a little bit.

Clarissa Carson:

And this year with all of my electives, I've chosen family oriented law subjects and family violence was one that really got me hooked and I haven't seen past it. I was lucky enough during my law degree to do two professional placements. I did the professional placement with Monash Law Clinics in the family section, which was amazing. It gave me a really good thorough understanding of what it means to be a family lawyer. I was interviewing clients, and it really gave me an opportunity to really feel that that area of law.

Clarissa Carson:

I was lucky enough to be chosen to do the family violence clinic with Southeast Monash Legal Services, and I was teamed up with a duty lawyer at the Dandenong Magistrates Court, which was such an amazing experience working with family violence and intervention orders and just understanding the mechanisms behind working with police, respondents, applicants, and just really advocating for applicants that didn't have a voice. Sounds challenging. Yeah. It was. It was really challenging, but it's rewarding too.

Clarissa Carson:

I think, you know, it has both sides of the coin. And what are you doing now, Clarissa? I'm working for a law firm, AJG Family Law. It's been fantastic. We've been working with legal aid.

Clarissa Carson:

My principal is an ICL. What's an ICL? It is an independent children's lawyer. So when there is a a matter in court, the court will order an ICL to be an impartial person that looks after the children and advocates their their wishes.

Becky Batagol:

So you're working as a children's lawyer?

Clarissa Carson:

No. No. I'm not. I'm working alongside my my principal. She does predominantly that, but we are family oriented lawyers.

Clarissa Carson:

As part of

Becky Batagol:

your law degree, you drafted feminist legislation. Yeah. In class, I didn't describe it as such. But if I look at what you did in class, your assignment, I would describe it as feminist. What does feminism mean to you as a law student?

Clarissa Carson:

It's a really interesting question. It's not something that I've ever contemplated. I've never really thought about feminism or myself as a feminist. I have approached, I guess, the legislation from a fair point of view. And I think fairness, at the end of the day, it looks like feminism.

Clarissa Carson:

Is it important to move beyond labels? Yeah. I I think so. I think for me, labeling myself as a feminist doesn't feel congruent with who I am. And I think who I really am is someone that advocates for someone that is less fortunate, whether that is male or female.

Clarissa Carson:

And within my legislation, I was really advocating for anyone, not just females. I've approached this as anyone that would misuse the legal system to get a leg up on their ex partner. What was the task that you had in class, and what did you decide to do with it? So the task was to write or change a piece of legislation, whether it's a current piece of legislation or a new piece of legislation, and then to write an accompanying second reading speech. It was as though it had already been moved through parliament, and this was my way of advocating this piece of legislation.

Clarissa Carson:

So I had decided to focus my assignment on systems abuse. And for me, the way I looked at what systems abuse was, it was when a partner uses the legal system to control or manipulate the situation that they're in. So usually with family violence specifically, you have two people that are within a relationship, and one may be coercively controlling. And when that partnership breaks up, their level of control is somewhat diminished. They don't have that level of control because they're not together.

Clarissa Carson:

So what I was reading, what I was hearing from different speakers that came to class was that they were finding that their partners were using the legal system to control the outcome that they wanted or to just manipulate, to instill fear, to put the other person in a position where they were less powerful. When you say systems abuse,

Becky Batagol:

do you mean, for example, someone unnecessarily calling someone into court or creating an additional need to attend mediation or something like that?

Clarissa Carson:

Yeah. Absolutely. All of those things as well as what is sometimes called conflicting out. So if you especially happens in rural areas when a partner will go and see all of the available legal facilities in that area, and then the other partner won't have anyone available to see because there is a conflict of interest. It might be that there'll be unnecessarily huge loads of paperwork thrown at the respondent or applicant, and it just takes up time.

Clarissa Carson:

And it's it's stressful, and it's just a level of coercion that it's unfair. So, Clarissa, what did you propose to fix that? So what I was proposing was that systems abuse is recognized as a form of family violence. It is the misuse and manipulation of the legal and administrative process and the services available, and that where there is this type of coercive control in the systems that are available to both parties, that there is a penalty attached to it.

Becky Batagol:

So that means that our family court

Clarissa Carson:

Mhmm.

Becky Batagol:

Can respond to that kind of behavior as if it's family violence? Absolutely. And gives them more tools to respond? Or It gives them the ability to call it out, and it also gives them the ability to say that this is not acceptable. So amazing proposal for law reform, but you had to draft it as a speech and actually provisions of a real act.

Becky Batagol:

And when I look at yours, it looks like something that I would see in Hansard, which is the official record of parliament. Thank you. Was it hard to draft legislation and a speech for an assignment in a degree, not when you're doing it in real life?

Clarissa Carson:

Yeah. Yeah. It was incredibly difficult. I think one of the things that I didn't contemplate was that when you change or you make tweaks in legislation, it has a knock on effect to other areas of that legislation. And I just didn't anticipate how difficult that was, and then I overthought it by a lot.

Clarissa Carson:

And then my drawing on my classes in constitution, making sure that the federal and the state laws weren't conflicting with each other, that was also another difficulty. So incredibly complex. Mhmm.

Becky Batagol:

Would you have advice that you'd give to other law students who might be thinking about an area of law that they wanna see change? Is there anything that you learned during this process that would be useful for other law students?

Clarissa Carson:

I think the one thing that I learned was to keep it simple. I overthought it. And in that overthinking, I got stuck. So I I really tried to go back to my why and what the problem was and then just try and

Becky Batagol:

look at just one part of the problem as opposed to the big problem. Clarissa, you've talked about how since you started your law degree, you've changed your thinking about what you wanna do, and you're now embarking on your legal career. Yeah. Is there anything that you've learned in this assignment that you plan to use in your career?

Clarissa Carson:

I think when I started my degree, the idea of doing law is that you're practicing from a desk and you're talking to people and that is all. But I think that there is so much more. And I've by doing this particular exercise, I've come to understand that there is so much more to law. And even if I am behind a desk and I am talking to people, I still have the opportunity to make changes. And I think that those changes come from working with people, hearing their stories, and just advocating, whether it's quietly advocating or making loud noises down the street with bollards.

Clarissa Carson:

It is still advocating for a system that works better for the people that we're working for. Is that more important in an area of law like family law where you're working, where there are clearly inadequacies in the law and there's a need for change? Yeah. I think so because there are more people that this law affects. It's not just one person.

Clarissa Carson:

It's not just a mom and a dad. These laws affect children and the way that they actually feel they operate in the world. You know, when there is coercive control between two adults, it is felt and seen by children. And if they are seeing these behaviors, then they start to model the behaviors. And we want to stop those behaviors in the future.

Becky Batagol:

You just made the hearts of all of us who are legal educators sing. Oh, really? I'm also interested, Clarissa, when you say that you're not a feminist, but you've used a method that that a bunch of us who are feminists created or devised. Is there anything you can take away from this project that's useful even for those who don't identify as feminists?

Clarissa Carson:

What does being a feminist mean? Because I I'm really interested to understand that, and maybe I'm congruently doing that, but I feel like I don't know how to articulate it.

Becky Batagol:

It's such a good question. It's something that I thought a lot about. And for me, being a feminist involved in the law means trying to unsettle the things that are problematic in terms of gender justice. So I wanna make change in in the world, and I do that through the lens of gender. So I think about the problems that those who are women, those who are gender diverse or have a a marginalized gender identity can suffer, as well as men because I think I think there's a flip side to that.

Becky Batagol:

And for me as a feminist, when I look at the problems that I focus on, they're problems that because of inequalities in our world that women suffer from the most. So for me in family law, family violence is a really big problem. Most matters that come before the courts and in mediation, there's experience of violence. And on the whole, that's an experience of women experiencing violence in the in the hands of men and that there are some groups of women who are are more marginalized. So for me as a feminist involved in law, I focus on gender problems.

Becky Batagol:

I also use what I would call a feminist method in how I go about law reform. So that is thinking about what is the lived experience or the real experience on the ground of this problem and to to bring into the law reform advocacy picture the voices of those who are most harmed by the law and make sure that their voices are heard in law reform. And the the other thing I do as a a feminist involved in law is to think about those women who are are more marginalized than others because of their experience of who they are. So it might be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, women with a disability whose experience in law is so fundamentally different that we need to rethink what law reform might look like for them to make sure they're not harmed as well.

Clarissa Carson:

Yeah. I've been thinking about it, and I I think it's the label of something. I mean, I feel uncomfortable labeling myself, and it feels like I'm an impostor saying that I'm a feminist. But I know that in my heart, I want to see people that are in hard situations do better.

Becky Batagol:

Clarissa, when I look at the law that you drafted, I noticed you didn't use the label men or women, and

Clarissa Carson:

you used what we might call gender neutral language. Why is that? Because I think that there is an instance or there's a bit an ability for men and women to partake in an abuse of this of our legal system. And I recognize that. And I think that it's unfair to men that are victims of family violence to be labeled or put into a a pot or a a circle of other people.

Becky Batagol:

So is it about unintended consequences, or is it about how the law applies fairly?

Clarissa Carson:

Yeah. I think it is about unintended consequences. I think that if you've got something that is one way, it really suggests that women are only the victims of family violence, and we know that that's not the truth. While women more often the victims of family violence, there are men that are victims as well. And I think that having a neutral law means that it can be applied equally.

Clarissa Carson:

Clarissa, do you want to read a little bit of your speech out for us? Sure. Speaker, these reforms are legally sound, socially necessary and immediately implementable. They do not interfere with legitimate rights to access justice or appeal, but they do affirm that the legal system must not be used as a tool of abuse. This reform is consistent with the findings of the 2024 Family Law Council report and gives effect to the national principles for family and domestic violence responses.

Clarissa Carson:

It reflects lived experience of victim survivors and builds on decades of advocacy, frontline work and academic research. It takes seriously the concerns raised by legal professionals, service providers and those most directly affected. Crucially, it seeks to educate the public, to raise awareness, shift attitudes, and ultimately prevent systems abuse from continuing unchecked. We must not allow a victim's pursuit of safety to become the very arena in which they are harmed again. This bill gives our courts the language, authority and tools to prevent that harm.

Clarissa Carson:

I commend the bill to the House.

Becky Batagol:

As a legal educator, when I read that, I am astounded. It brings tears to my eyes because I think that so much of what law students are asked to produce is regurgitating what they've learned in class. But this is stepping totally outside the classroom into literally the parliamentary chamber. And if the quality of what we get from our parliament is anything like this, then we're gonna have a great parliament that will create laws that are better for those who are harmed. And you did this as a student.

Becky Batagol:

Like, it's amazing. I'm I'm so grateful for you being part of this episode, but also for doing this work and taking so much care with it. Thank you so much.

Clarissa Carson:

I really felt that when writing this speech, it gave me the ability to have my voice and not get lost in the research of someone else's voice. Thanks so much, Clarissa, for coming in. It's been wonderful speaking to you. Oh, thank you, Becky. It's been a pleasure.

Becky Batagol:

This podcast is recorded on the lands of the Boonwurrung Bunurrung people of the Kulin nations. We pay our respects to elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples who are listening today. In this episode, Clarissa and I were talking about the experience of learning and teaching law. And as a teacher, I am awed to be able to share my knowledge of law in a place where there's been sixty five thousand years of strong knowledge exchange, and I'm really proud to be part of that tradition. You've been listening to Feminist Acts.

Becky Batagol:

This podcast was produced by Miniature and funded by the Monash University Office of the Deputy Vice Chancellor, Research and Enterprise.