Critics ridicule NSW police commissioner’s idea for sexual consent app

The New South Wales police commissioner Mick Fuller has floated the idea of using an app to record ­consent before sex.

In an opinion piece in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph on Thursday, Fuller raised the idea of an app which would record consent, comparing it with Covidsafe records introduced for pubs and restaurants during the pandemic.

“There is no implied ­consent. It needs to be positive consent. How do we do that in this day and age? One option is with technology,” Fuller wrote.

“People say ‘how unromantic is that’. But think of how many people are looking for friendship and love online – it’s not as though technology and dating are foreign to us.”

While he conceded that “consent must be active and ongoing throughout a sexual encounter”, he compared the idea of a consent app with the rising use of check-in technology during Covid-19.

“Just as we’ve had to check in at the coffee shop to keep people safe, is there a way consent can be confirmed or documented?” he said.

“You can’t walk into a shop at the moment without scanning in. Two years ago I would have said ‘You’re mad, I’m not doing that.’ Do we protect people ­dating by having a positive ­affirmation … in an app?”

Labor’s shadow minister for women and education, Tanya Plibersek, congratulated Fuller for raising the issue of consent in the legal system, but cautioned that “consent can be withdrawn at any time”.

“So the fact that you’ve signed up in the beginning, doesn’t mean that you’re up for everything that your partner suggests,” she said.

“You can withdraw consent. And I think we really need to be teaching consent to our kids, as part of a respectful relationship program that’s age appropriate, in our schools, in our homes.”

Plibersek said changes need to be made to Australia’s legal system to combat the low rates of sexual assault conviction.

“I know the police who work on sexual assault cases work really hard to get convictions,” she said.

“And the problem is our legal system, which is stacked against victims of sexual assault. We need to change our legal system to stop rapists walking around our streets.”

The proposal comes a week after Fuller told a state budget estimates hearing that he wanted consent laws to be overhauled in the face of rising sexual assault reporting figures and stubbornly low conviction rates.

He told a hearing last week that current consent laws remained a significant barrier in reaching convictions.

“You [can] have a current matter, a current victim, you have forensic evidence, you have recency, but this issue of consent is one that is a struggle for juries, judges and magistrates,” Fuller told the hearing.

“There needs to be a line drawn in the sand in terms of what consent is and I think it needs to be a better criminal definition around that.”

Earlier this week, the NSW Greens introduced a bill to strengthen the state’s sexual consent laws, with “enthusiastic consent” a key principle of the bill.