The Attorney-General is referring the mistake of fact defence in rape cases to the Queensland Law Reform Commission for advice on how to change it.
The 110-year-old legal defence allows an accused rapist to argue they had a mistaken but honest and reasonable belief that sex was consensual.
It has been used by defendants including repeat violent offenders and those who argued that a woman’s behaviour, including previous flirting or visiting a man’s home, could be taken as consent.
The Government had been reviewing the use of the contentious defence since last May, when the ABC revealed the case of “Jayne”, a woman who nearly bled to death after a sexual encounter on the Gold Coast.