{"id":847158,"date":"2026-08-07T20:18:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-07T20:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/847158\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T20:18:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T20:18:11","slug":"a-queensland-domestic-violence-victim-was-promised-a-voice-then-told-she-was-no-longer-welcome-to-call-the-ministers-office-queensland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/847158\/","title":{"rendered":"A Queensland domestic violence victim was promised a voice \u2013 then told she was no longer welcome to call the minister\u2019s office | Queensland"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the Queensland minister, Amanda Camm, announced her hand-picked domestic violence working group, her statement<\/a> said the state government would \u201cgive victims a voice\u201d.<\/p>\n

About a year later, Camm\u2019s chief of staff sent an email to one of the members of the working group who has lived experience of domestic violence. The woman was dissatisfied with the process, and had been seeking a private meeting with the minister for the prevention of domestic and family violence to raise her concerns.<\/p>\n

That woman was told she was no longer welcome to phone the minister\u2019s offices. If she called again, the office would hang up.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t the only time a member of the working group felt silenced.<\/p>\n

As Guardian Australia revealed last month<\/a>, the government buried the group\u2019s summary report and recommendations after its members were heavily critical of police responses and called for significant reforms.<\/p>\n

Three of the women involved in the process have told Guardian Australia, on condition of anonymity, that they felt unable to publicly raise concerns about the \u201ctoken\u201d and \u201cwaste-of-time\u201d consultations.<\/p>\n

They say that this is because they were made to sign confidentiality agreements when joining.<\/p>\n

Special \u2018communication protocol\u2019<\/p>\n

During estimates hearings last week, the head of Camm\u2019s families department, Belinda Drew, denied that working group members were made to sign \u201cNDAs\u201d.<\/p>\n

But information given to group members, seen by Guardian Australia, confirms they were required to sign \u201cconfidentiality agreements\u201d as the group would deal with sensitive and personal information.<\/p>\n

One woman, Cindy*, says that after repeatedly raising concerns that some issues were not being taken seriously, Camm promised to meet her privately to discuss them. Cindy and other working group members say this promise was made in front of the group.<\/p>\n

Cindy did later meet with two ministerial staff, but Camm did not attend.<\/p>\n

She says that when she complained to Camm\u2019s advisers that the minister had promised her a personal meeting, one of them raised the fact she had \u201csigned an NDA\u201d and couldn\u2019t tell anyone or take it further.<\/p>\n

When Cindy wrote to Camm afterwards to again request a meeting, Camm\u2019s chief of staff, Anna Hilton, sent an email saying the office was implementing a special \u201ccommunication protocol\u201d for Cindy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you contact by telephone, you will be reminded of this communication protocol and the call will be terminated,\u201d Hilton wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately your conduct during these meetings is not conducive to an ongoing dialogue, which should be respectful on all sides.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cindy denies any conduct that was inappropriate, but says she did grow increasingly frustrated at what she saw was a \u201csham\u201d process, where the government wanted to be seen as listening to victims but not act on their concerns.<\/p>\n

\u201cCamm wasn\u2019t there during most of the sessions,\u201d Cindy said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe felt we were literally there to tick a box so Amanda could say \u2018we had a conference with DV survivors\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the email she received, Cindy said: \u201cYou\u2019re making victims seem like they\u2019re the problem. You\u2019re no different to the abuser. I\u2019ve never read an email like that before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another member of the victim-survivor working group, Fiona*, says she initially felt privileged to be part of the process. \u201cThe first meeting sounded promising.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cFrom then on it was very clear when Camm attended that we weren\u2019t going to achieve anything.<\/p>\n

\u201cCamm clearly wasn\u2019t interested \u2026 we were nothing more than a token, tick-the-box exercise. It became obvious that she had her own political agenda and our lived experience didn\u2019t fall in line with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Everyone expected it would be published\u2019<\/p>\n

As revealed by Guardian Australia, the buried summary report from the group focused heavily on issues with inconsistent and problematic police responses and included recommendations for independent oversight of police.<\/p>\n

Camm said last month that victim-survivors who participated in the working group had done so \u201cunder the explicit understanding\u201d the report would not be published.<\/p>\n

She said that Labor MPs who cited the summary report leaked to the Guardian \u2013 which contained no sensitive or personal information \u2013 had \u201cbetrayed the wishes of those women\u201d.<\/p>\n

Three members of the working group each say they believe the summary report was written for \u201cbroader distribution\u201d, as opposed to a more comprehensive report that included sensitive information.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone expected it would be published,\u201d says one member, Anna*.<\/p>\n

But she said it became clear that the recommendations differed from the government\u2019s agenda, especially with regard to ongoing issues with police responses.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe put them in a situation where they said they wanted things to be shaped by victims, but then they didn\u2019t like what we told them.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it seems that rather than be called out on not listening to victims, they just tried to shut everything down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked for comment, Camm\u2019s office sent a response that did not address several questions and repeated her earlier statement.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome of the victims who had lived through extremely traumatic experiences only participated in our workshops under the explicit understanding the report would not be broadly published,\u201d Camm said.<\/p>\n

In Australia, domestic and family violence counselling <\/a>is available from Full Stop Australia on 1800 385 578. In the UK, call the national domestic abuse helpline<\/a> on 0808 2000 247, or visit Women\u2019s Aid<\/a>. In the US, the domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-SAFE (7233). Other international helplines may be found via www.befrienders.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Queensland minister, Amanda Camm, announced her hand-picked domestic violence working group, her statement said the state…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":847159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-847158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=847158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/847159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=847158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=847158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}