NSW to criminalise secret GPS tracking after report highlighting number of devices bought by DV offenders

After their marriage of 25 years deteriorated and his wife expressed a desire to leave, a man in regional New South Wales bought a GPS tracking device from an auto parts retailer. He used it to monitor her movements for the month, and up to at least the day before he shot and killed her, and then turned the gun on himself. “The tracking appeared to form part of a series of behaviours that the offender used to prevent the victim from leaving the relationship,” wrote a NSW Crime Commission report in 2024. Although his children and neighbour knew the tracking was taking place, under existing stalking laws, his conduct, undetected by the victim, may not have met the threshold in the state. Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email The NSW government will introduce changes to parliament on Tuesday to make it a criminal offence to secretly monitor a person where the victim is unaware they are being stalked, as long as a reasonable person would consider it to cause someone to fear physical or mental harm. It’s a response to the findings of the crime commission’s Project Hakea report in 2024, which identified that tracking and surveillance devices were increasingly being used to enable domestic violence and organised crime. It suggested one in four people who bought tracking devices in NSW had a history of domestic violence. The government has passed previous reforms to domestic violence laws, including changes to bail settings, with support from the opposition. …