About submissions
The Victorian Law Reform Commission is an independent, government-funded organisation that develops, reviews and recommends reform of Victoria’s laws. The Commission has a charter to consult with the community and advise the Attorney-General on how to improve and update Victorian laws.
To ensure our work is informed by the views and experiences of the community, we engage with the community in a number of ways, including consultation and receiving written submissions from the community. Our submission policy below outlines how we conduct our submission process. This is carried out in accordance with our Information Privacy Policy.
What is a submission?
A submission is a response from a person or organisation, stating their views about the law under review. A submission may include personal experiences and ideas about how the law should change.
During a project’s consultation period, we ask to hear from anyone who has experience of the issues under review through the submission process. Any contribution is welcome, large or small.
Submissions help us understand different views and experiences. We use the information from submissions, along with consultation meetings, questionnaire and survey responses and other research, to draw conclusions about the law and develop recommendations
Who may make a submission
We invite submissions from all members of the community, including people and groups who have relevant experience or expertise in an area of law or an issue we are examining.
A submission may be made by an individual or an organisation or larger group.
How to make a submission
Submissions can be made during a project’s consultation period. Details of how to do this are available on the relevant project page. You can send us your submission via email or in hard copy.
Send your submissions to:
- Email: law.reform@lawreform.vic.gov.au (or the project email address available on the project page of our website) or
- Mail: PO Box 4637, GPO Melbourne Vic 3001
What to include in a submission
We publish issues or consultation papers to explain the law under review and ask some questions. It helps to read them before making a submission because the questions in those papers are intended to guide submission writing.
Submissions do not have to follow a particular format. We prefer you to answer the questions we ask in the consultation paper, but you do not have to answer all of them. You can provide as much detail as you like – the more the better, as long as it is relevant.
Submissions may also provide further information or suggestions for law reform, including case studies or information about your lived experience of a legal issue.
Assistance
If you need the help of an interpreter, or other assistance to have your views heard, please contact us by
- email: law.reform@lawreform.vic.gov.au (or the project email available on the project page) or
- phone: (03) 8608 7800.
For some law reform projects, you may be able to make a submission in a different form, such as an audio recording. Please see the project page for each law reform project to find out more about this.
How submissions are used
We use submissions, consultations, questionnaire and survey responses and other research to analyse the law, draw conclusions, and develop findings and recommendations. This information is then used to prepare a final report and other publications.
Submissions assist us in writing our reports. We may refer to the views and information from submissions in our reports and in other publications. Where we do this, we attribute views to the people or organisations who have made the submission in accordance with how they have told us they want to be identified.
We are committed to inclusivity and want to hear from all interested and affected parties, but we cannot reproduce in full the views of every person and group who makes a submission. In our reports, we attempt to broadly capture and accurately describe the perspectives of those affected. While everything we are told is considered and used to inform our recommendations, it may not be explicitly discussed in our report.
Submissions may be published
We refer to submissions in our reports, and we list the names of submitters in an appendix at the back of the report.
We publish submissions on our website to encourage discussion and to keep the community informed. We remove personal addresses, contact details and other personally identifying information from submissions before they are published. If confidential matters or views are raised, these are not included in the submissions published on our website.
The publication and inclusion of information from submissions in our reports and on our website is informed by submitters’ preferences. If you do not want your name used, you can ask that the submission is kept confidential or that it be published as ‘name withheld’.
The views expressed in submissions are those of the individuals or organisations who submit them. The fact that we publish a submission does not imply that we accept or agree with these views. We will not publish on our website submissions that contain offensive or defamatory comments.
We treat all submissions as public unless the submitter asks us to treat it as confidential.
Name withheld
If you wish to make a submission but do not want your name made public, when we publish your submission, we will note that your name has been withheld. The submission will appear on our website and in our report as: Submission number … (name withheld)
Confidential submissions
We also accept submissions in which the material is confidential. You can ask us to keep your submission confidential if it includes personal experiences or other sensitive information. We will not publish confidential submissions on the website or elsewhere.
However, we may refer to a confidential submission in our report, without identifying you.
Please note that because of our commitment to transparency, we usually prefer to quote from public submissions rather than confidential ones in our reports. This does not mean that the content of a confidential submission will be treated as any less important. Your submission will be read carefully and used to decide on the recommendations and conclusions in the final report.
Any request by someone outside the Commission for access to a confidential submission will be refused unless a formal freedom of information request has been made. Such a request will be determined in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Vic), which is designed to protect personal information and information given in confidence. Further information can be found at: Freedom of Information – Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner.
Anonymous submissions
Anonymous submissions – where the submitter does not provide a name – are accepted but, like confidential submissions, are less likely to be referred to in our reports for transparency reasons.
Submissions that are late or beyond the scope of the terms of reference
The closing date for submissions is advertised in our consultation or issues paper and on our web site. This deadline is provided so that we have enough time to properly consider the issues and write the report.
We may not be able to consider a late submission in as much depth as other submissions.
Submissions must be relevant. We only review the matters that are detailed in the terms of reference. We recommend using the consultation or issues paper to help guide your submission.
Collection, use and management of information
Submissions which contain personal information or personally identifying information will be collected, stored and used in accordance with the Commission’s Information Privacy Policy, the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014 (Vic) and other relevant laws.
Any request by someone outside the Commission for access to confidential, anonymous or name withheld submissions will be refused unless a formal Freedom of Information (FOI) request has been made. Such a request will be determined in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Vic), which is designed to protect personal information and information given in confidence. Further information can be found at: Freedom of Information – Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner.
Other ways to participate
We also encourage people who want to share their views or participate in the law reform process, but who do not want to make a submission, to share their views in other ways.
For some law reform projects, we run public town-hall discussions, or public questionnaires or surveys. See Engage in law reform for information about the other ways we consult, or the project page for our current law reform projects to find out more.
You may find out more information by contacting us at the project email address which is published on each project’s webpage, or in the project issues or consultation paper.
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