Recent affirmative consent amendments are accompanied by ambitious political claims and public campaigns. Patriarchal paradigms of power shape and determine reforms along a continuum – from pre-drafting submissions and recommendations to parliamentary debates and media coverage, through to criminalisation and punishment. These processes are run by colonial institutions – parliaments, police, courts, prisons – which, in turn, are on a timeline from invasion. Drawing on the scholarship of therapeutic jurisprudence and feminist perspectives informed by Indigenous epistemologies, this article interrogates the criminal law as a function of colonial white patriarchy. By ‘stretching the timeline’ to its foundations in carceral colonialism, the criminal law can be revealed as unfit for the purpose of reducing or stopping male violence. By situating the criminal process as law of the colonising power, affirmative consent amendments and public awareness initiatives are examined against the known needs of victims.

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