Women’s Legal Service Tasmania chief executive Susan Fahey said the WLST received a “constant flood” of complaints from victims being stalked and harassed via social media.  

She said legislation had “nowhere near caught up with” evolving technology. 

Whilst spyware wasn’t “prevalent” in Tasmania, Ms Fahey said the WLST had seen cases where victims were targeted, and it was difficult to prove who installed the software.

Attorney-General Vanessa Goodwin said “stalking of any kind is a serious offence and not tolerated in Tasmania”.

“Stalking through the use of technology such as social media is covered by the Criminal Code and the Family Violence Act [is] also broad enough to capture cyber crime,” Dr Goodwin said. 

Ms Fahey said the Family Violence Act could capture “some aspects of cyber crime” but did “not specifically address the more complex aspects of it”. 

”The Family Violence Act is a 12-year-old piece of law that at times struggles to address some of the basic aspects of family violence, let alone the rapid developments in technology and how they can be used to terrorise and abuse people,” Ms Fahey said. 

Tasmania Police Sergeant Michelle Plumpton said police deal with incidents “relating to a partner or former partner’s online behaviour, which constitutes family violence”. 

Sergeant Plumpton said whether online actions by perpetrators were considered a family violence order breach depended on the FVO conditions. 

Sergeant Plumpton said there had been instances of social media hacking connected to relationship breakdowns. 

“In these cases we provide advice to victims about engaging a solicitor to help resolve the issue as well as advice about regaining control of social media accounts when they’ve been locked out and had their passwords changed,” Sergeant Plumpton said. 

Ms Fahey said “most” family violence cases the WLST dealt with included “a technology component”. 

"Technology just always seems to provide a way for someone to contact someone, no matter how much they try and stop them,” Ms Fahey said. 

"[Cyber crime within family violence] is not going to go away, we do need that multi-faceted approach," she said. 

"Whilst the law does try and keep up, technology has developed so quickly that governing the inappropriate use of it is difficult," Ms Fahey said.