of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 of England and Wales. The Public Prosecution Service for Northern Ireland has the same policy for marital rape as for other forms of rape; it states in its Policy for Prosecuting Cases of Rape document that: "The Policy applies to all types of rape, including marital and relationship rape, acquaintance and stranger rape, both against male and female victims". Australia In Australia, the immunity for marital rape was removed in all states and territories, either by statute or judicial decision, between late 1970s and early 1990s. Previously, the exemption of marital rape was based on the English common law offense of rape, being generally understood as "carnal knowledge", outside of marriage, of a female against her will. The common law definition of rape continued to apply in some states, while others codified the definition, which in each case included a marital exemption. In Queensland, for example, the provision read: "Any person who has carnal knowledge of a woman or girl, not his wife, without her consent, or with her consent, if the consent is obtained by force, or by means of threats or intimidation of any kind, or by fear of bodily harm, or by means of false and fraudulent representations as to the nature of the act, or, in the case of a married woman, by personating her husband, is guilty of a crime, which is called rape." The first Australian state to deal with marital rape was South Australia, under the progressive initiatives of Premier Don Dunstan, which in 1976 partially removed the exemption. Section 73 of the Criminal Law Consolidation Act Amendment Act 1976 (SA) read: "No person shall, by reason only of the fact that he is married to some other person, be presumed to have consented to sexual intercourse with that other person". Nevertheless, the laws did not go as far as equating marital with non-marital rape; the law required violence or other aggravating circumstances, in order for an act of marital intercourse to be rape. The first Australian jurisdiction to completely remove the marital exemption was New South Wales in 1981. Western Australia, Victoria, and ACT did the same in 1985; and Tasmania in 1987. Discussions of criminalization of marital rape were already taking place in Queensland in the late 1970s, but it was not until 1989 that the exemption was removed and the Northern Territory did the