Family violence-related laws that would bring Tasmanian legislation into line with laws across the rest of the country are not expected to be legislated until sometime next year.
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Advocate groups and victim-survivors had long campaigned for non-fatal strangulation to become a standalone offence in the state due to the relevance of attempted strangulation with eventual homicide in relationships categorised by family violence.
Tasmanian Coroner Olivia McTaggart in August 2019 recommended the state introduce an offence to capture the seriousness of attempted strangulation in the report on the death of Southern Tasmanian woman Jodi Eaton who had been murdered by a man who had at least five previous instances of non-fatally strangling women he knew.
State Attorney-General Elise Archer said the government was progressing entering the offence into legislation "as a matter of priority".
"The [Justice] Department ... has commenced consultation with relevant stakeholders, and I anticipate that a draft Bill will be released for necessary community consultation by the end of 2021, with the intent to table the legislation early next year," she said.
"I have also requested the development of a community education and awareness campaign to ensure that we send a clear and strong statement about the seriousness of the harmful act of non-fatal strangulation, and to increase community awareness of the protections and laws applicable regarding family violence."
Premier Peter Gutwein committed to introducing the offence during a The Examiner election debate in April after Opposition Leader Rebecca White said Labor would introduce the offence.
Ms Archer had previously reserved a commitment to introducing the offence until the finalisation of a report by the Tasmanian Sentencing Advisory Committee citing that she did not want there to be any "unintended consequences" of such an offence.
The report was initially due to be completed in March 2021, but it was not officially released until June 17.
Since then there have been at least six instances where males perpetrated strangulation, choking or suffocation offences against women.
In all but one instance the woman was the perpetrator's partner. In the remaining instance the woman was the perpetrator's mother.
Two of the perpetrators were charged with persistent family violence, such was the ongoing nature of their offending.
One of them was sentenced to 12 years in prison and the other received a sentence of five-and-a-half-years behind bars. One man was sentenced to five years in prison on three counts of common assault. The perpetrator was on parole at the time and the sentencing considered several other summary offences.
The remaining instances were sentenced as common assaults, and only one of the men received a jail term which was of 15 months. Twelve of those months were suspended.
One man, the man who strangled his mother on the day of the AFL grand final after drinking excessively, was sentenced to 18 months of home detention and a community corrections order.
The final man, who choked his partner for 30 seconds to the point she thought she may have lost consciousness, did not receive any prison sentence with the Justice opting for a community corrections order instead.
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