A Royal Commission Into Family Law And FVROs

When a family separates in Western Australia, four separate systems can act on it at once. Each has its own court, its own law and its own timetable, and none of them accounts for the others. This memo sets out how each works, what is known about how they perform, and the case for a Western Australian Royal Commission.

Most people learn how this works only once they are inside it. What follows is the sequence as the Acts and the courts set it out: what is filed, what happens next, who is heard, and when.

1. Separation runs on four tracks

Separation is a fact, not a legal step. Nothing is filed and no court is told. What follows can run on four separate tracks, in four different courts, under four different laws, on four different timetables.

• Protection — the Magistrates Court of Western Australia, under the Restraining Orders Act 1997 (WA).
• Children — the Family Court of Western Australia, under the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) for married couples and the Family Court Act 1997 (WA) for unmarried couples.
• Property and child support — the Family Court for property, and Services Australia for child support, assessed by a government agency rather than by a court.
• Child protection — the Children’s Court of Western Australia, under the Children and Community Services Act 2004 (WA), where the State itself takes the child.

An order made on one track has effects on the others. Nothing requires the court making it to consider those effects, and nothing requires the other courts to review it.

2. Track one — Protection

Magistrates Court of Western Australia. Restraining Orders Act 1997 (WA).

Applying

An application for a family violence restraining order is filled in and handed in at any Magistrates Court. There is no fee and no lawyer is required. The accuser completes a form and a sworn statement setting out what the accused is said to have done.

The form lets the accuser ask for the first hearing to be held without the accused there. It is a tick-box, not something unusual. If that box is ticked, the magistrate decides on one side’s evidence only, without telling the accused and without hearing anything from them.

Most applications are given a court date within one to two weeks. Urgent ones can be heard within 24 to 48 hours.

How the order reaches the accused

The order comes into force when it is served, or at a later time if the order says so. Service is not always a police officer handing over a document. Under s55 an order can be taken to have been served without physical delivery. Under s57 a copy is sufficient, and under s60 the court can permit some other method.

There is also a telephone pathway. Under ss19 to 24 an application can be made and heard by telephone, and a telephone order made at the end of it. While that is happening a police officer may require the accused to remain in a place, and may arrest and detain them for up to two hours so the order can be served. Separately, under s30A a police officer can make a police order with no court involvement at all.

The accused is not asked

At no point before a temporary order is made is the accused told about it, asked to respond, or asked for their side. There is no check of any kind, no requirement that police interview them, and no mediation.

Once served, the order is in force. It may exclude the accused from the home regardless of who owns or rents it, restrict or prohibit contact with children named in it, and it carries criminal liability from that moment.

Twenty-one days

The accused then has 21 days to object. That is the only step available.

If the accused does not object, the temporary order becomes a two-year order. No hearing is held, no evidence is tested, no finding is made. Not objecting does not mean the accused agreed with it — the Act does not distinguish between someone who accepts the allegation and someone who did not understand the form, could not get advice, or did not realise that saying nothing makes the order permanent.

If the accused does object, the order is not suspended. It stays in force, in full, until the hearing. The Act sets no maximum period between the making of the temporary order and that hearing, and waiting times are not published court by court.

The hearing

The hearing is not an appeal. It is a first hearing of the allegation, in the same court, before a magistrate of that court.

• The accuser must prove the allegation on the basis that it is more likely than not — the civil standard, applied to an order carrying criminal liability.
• The normal rules about what evidence a court can accept do not apply.
• Where criminal charges arise from the same events, the usual practice is to postpone the restraining order hearing until those charges are finished. The temporary order continues throughout.
• A two-year order can be made initially, with no limit on the number of extensions.

An appeal lies to the District Court under s58. Appeals are uncommon, face a high threshold, and add a further three to six months. Outcomes at hearing are not published.

Breach

Breaking a restraining order is a criminal offence under s61. Police must arrest a person they reasonably suspect of breaching one. The accuser cannot withdraw it, and cannot lawfully give permission for contact.

• First offence: up to 2 years imprisonment and a $24,000 fine.
• Later offences: up to 5 years. Breach involving violence: up to 7 years.
• s61I: mandatory imprisonment for a third breach within two years.

An order made without hearing the accused, and made permanent without a hearing where nobody objects, carries the same criminal liability as one made after a full hearing.

3. Track two — Children

Family Court of Western Australia. Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) for married couples; Family Court Act 1997 (WA) for unmarried couples.

Western Australia is the only state that never handed its family law powers to the Commonwealth. It has its own Family Court, applying federal law to married couples and state law to unmarried couples and most children’s matters.

Before applying about children, parents must generally attend family dispute resolution and obtain a certificate. There are exemptions, and one of them is where family violence is alleged. An allegation therefore does two things at once: it supports a restraining order, and it can remove the requirement to try mediation first.

The sequence after filing is: an interim hearing, which sets arrangements while the case runs; then in most contested cases a family report, written by a court-appointed or single expert; sometimes an Independent Children’s Lawyer appointed to represent the child; then a final hearing.

Two features carry particular weight.

• Arrangements set early become the position the final hearing measures against. The longer the case runs, the stronger the argument that the existing arrangement should not be disturbed, so elapsed time affects the outcome on its own.
• The 2023 amendments removed the presumption of equal shared parental responsibility and the related equal-time provisions, and replaced the list of factors the court weighs. Those changes apply in Western Australia as elsewhere.

About 55 per cent of matters before the Family Court of Western Australia seek orders about children.

A restraining order restricting contact with children is made by the Magistrates Court, and contact cannot be restored in that court. That is a Family Court matter, on a separate application, on its own timetable, at the applicant’s own cost.

4. Track three — Property and child support

Family Court of Western Australia for property. Services Australia for child support.

Property runs on its own timetable, ordinarily behind the case about the children. A separated couple can remain financially tied together for years — unable to refinance, sell or settle — while the children’s case is decided first.

Child support is not decided by a court at all. It is assessed by Services Australia on the last taxable income it holds. Where income has fallen, the assessment lags the change and the debt builds at the old rate while the reassessment is processed. Enforcement — taking money directly from wages, bans on leaving the country — operates against the assessed figure rather than the actual one.

Neither track is coordinated with the other two. A person can be paying child support assessed on income they no longer earn, while unable to release capital from a house they still part-own, while excluded from that house by an order made in a different court.

5. Track four — Child protection

Children’s Court of Western Australia. Children and Community Services Act 2004 (WA). Department of Communities.

This is a separate system again, and the one with the greatest power. It is not the Family Court, and it is not about a dispute between parents. Here the State removes the child.

Removal

• The Department of Communities can apply to the Children’s Court for a warrant to take a child into provisional protection and care. That application is made without the parents present.
• Under s37, the Department or a police officer can remove a child without any warrant where the child is at “immediate and major risk”.
• The Department then places the child, usually seeking a suitable family member first, subject to a carer assessment.

What happens next — and the time limits

Unlike the restraining order track, this one has deadlines written into the Act.

• The Department must make a protection application no more than 2 working days after the child is taken.
• The Court must endeavour to list that application within 3 working days of it being made.

The Children’s Court then hears from each parent and other people important to the child, and decides whether to make a protection order. There are four kinds; under one of them the child stays with the parents. Orders can run until the child turns 18. The Court can make interim orders while the case proceeds, the child has a right to legal representation under s180, and appeals lie under s169.

The grounds

A child is in need of protection if there is no parent or suitable family member to care for them; or the child has suffered or is likely to suffer physical abuse, neglect, sexual abuse or emotional abuse including exposure to family violence; or the parents have not protected, or are unlikely or unable to protect, the child from harm; or the child has suffered or is likely to suffer harm because the parents are unable or unwilling to arrange adequate care or treatment. The Court must also find that making an order is better for the child than making none.

Exposure to family violence is a ground. An allegation on track one can therefore support action on track four, in a different court, under a different Act, with a different test.

6. The numbers

• Western Australia recorded more than 42,000 family and domestic violence offences involving assault or threatening behaviour in 2024–25 — about 115 a day, the highest in a decade.
• A restraining order application costs nothing to lodge and requires no lawyer.
• A temporary order becomes a two-year order automatically if not objected to within 21 days.
• Breach carries mandatory imprisonment on a third offence within two years under s61I.
• The WA Ombudsman recorded 11,352 breach hearings, 8,147 charges, 2,676 alleged offenders and 5,424 victims across its investigation period.
• About 55 per cent of Family Court of Western Australia matters seek orders about children.
• Family court cases cost upwards of $100,000 a party.
• Child protection has statutory deadlines of 2 working days to file and 3 working days to list. The restraining order track has none.

7. What is measured, and what is not

The figures above are the whole of what is published. Everything below is generated by these systems and reported nowhere.

• Restraining orders applied for and granted each year, court by court.
• The proportion made without the accused there, by telephone order, or where service was taken to have occurred rather than made in person.
• Police orders made under s30A, and what followed each one.
• The proportion that become permanent by the 21-day rule rather than after a hearing.
• Time from temporary order to hearing, and outcomes at hearing — kept, changed or cancelled.
• Appeal rates and outcomes under s58.
• People in custody with breach of a restraining order as the most serious offence, and how many under s61I.
• Time to hearing and to final orders in the Family Court of Western Australia, in children’s and in property matters.
• Whether contact with children was ever restored after a temporary order, and how long that took.
• Representation rates for both sides at each stage.

Nor is anything recorded about what happens to people afterwards — for accused people and accusers alike: whether they lost work, a licence or a clearance; whether they lost housing; mental health outcomes, and whether anyone follows up; whether the person came back before a court again; and what happened to the children.

No review conducted to date has been able to measure the operation of these systems, only describe them.

8. Delay, on every track

On each track elapsed time changes the outcome, and on only one of them is there a deadline in the Act.

• Protection: no maximum between temporary order and hearing. The order runs in full throughout. An interval of many months is not a departure from the process — the process contains nothing that would prevent it.
• Children: arrangements set early harden into the position a final hearing measures against.
• Property: runs behind the children’s case, leaving a couple financially tied for years.
• Child support: the debt accrues at the old rate while a reassessment is processed.
• Child protection: 2 working days to file, 3 working days to list — the only track with deadlines written into law.

Both Commonwealth reviews — the Australian Law Reform Commission in 2019 and the Joint Select Committee across 2019 to 2021 — identified extensive court delays, and the Joint Select Committee directed 29 recommendations at delays, costs and enforceability. The Commonwealth reported a 17.8 per cent reduction in the federal family law courts’ pending caseload as at 2 September 2022. That is a federal measure; the Western Australian courts do not publish equivalents, so no comparable statement can be made about this state in either direction.

9. Cost, and who gets a lawyer

Fee position from the Magistrates Court of Western Australia; family court cost from the party’s published family policy. The comparison is of process cost and does not describe any individual case.

Legal Aid WA runs a Domestic Violence Legal Unit, its published scope being services to women, children, and men in same-sex relationships affected by family violence. It gives advice, lodges applications online, and represents people in court through its duty lawyer service, with a duty lawyer at Perth Magistrates Court each morning. A separate Stronger Women program covers regional Western Australia and includes court representation.

For the accused, Legal Aid WA states that other services within it provide legal advice “in limited circumstances”. Representation comes mainly from community legal centres tied to particular courts. Ongoing representation under a grant of aid exists for some restraining order cases, but Legal Aid WA states a grant “will not usually be granted if help can be provided by a duty lawyer service”. Grants are also means and merit tested — only available if the accused is poor enough and the case is judged strong enough. Both tests are applied by the funding body, not by the court hearing the matter, and neither the thresholds nor the refusal rate are published.

10. What has already been examined

The Joint Select Committee was appointed in September 2019, produced four reports, and tabled its final report in November 2021. Parliamentary committees can require evidence but do not hold Royal Commission powers of search, and cannot give a witness the protections at ss30 and 32 of the WA Act. No review has examined the child protection track alongside the others.

11. What was implemented

The Commonwealth responded to the Joint Select Committee in January 2023 and has legislated three times since.

• Family Law Amendment Act 2023 — signed into law 6 November 2023, main parts from 6 May 2024. Removed the presumption of equal shared parental responsibility and the equal-time provisions, replaced the list of best-interests factors, clarified the role of Independent Children’s Lawyers, and replaced s121 with a restructured rule against publishing accounts of family court cases.
• Family Law Amendment (Information Sharing) Act 2023 — sharing of family violence and child abuse risk information between the family law courts and agencies.
• Family Law Amendment Act 2024 — signed into law 10 December 2024. Property and financial framework, disclosure, costs, and a review required by law three years after commencement.

The removal of the equal shared parental responsibility presumption moved away from the position commonly urged by separated parents seeking shared care. It is recorded here for completeness. Those reforms addressed the federal children’s framework; they did not address the matters at section 12.

12. What was not

First — no way to test a false allegation

The Joint Select Committee recommended procedures to investigate claims that a party has wilfully misled the court. The Government responded in January 2023 and the Commonwealth has legislated three times since. It has not been enacted. An allegation that does not hold up attracts no consequence; the cost of disproving it falls entirely on the accused; a result that does not support it does not automatically change an order already in force; and there is no record of how often allegations are found to be unsupported. That recommendation concerned federal cases. No equivalent has ever been recommended or enacted under Western Australian law.

Second — the Commonwealth could not reach the state law

Not one of the three Commonwealth Acts altered a state restraining order or a state child protection order. They could not: the Restraining Orders Act 1997 and the Children and Community Services Act 2004 are Western Australian laws. Every feature described in Part One of this memo is untouched by all of it, and the restraining order law has not been reviewed since 2014.

Third — nobody has looked at the join

How the four tracks work together has never been examined by a body able to compel evidence from all of them. An allegation on one track can restrict contact on another, remove the requirement to mediate on a third, and supply a ground on a fourth. No inquiry has held power across that whole picture.

13. Why a Royal Commission, and why Western Australia

The power already exists

Western Australia holds full Royal Commission powers under the Royal Commissions Act 1968 (WA). The Governor issues letters patent — the formal document setting up a commission — on the advice of Executive Council. No Commonwealth agreement is required.

• Power to summon witnesses and require documents and evidence.
• Search warrants issued by a judge of the Supreme Court (s18).
• Contempt punishable by 2 years imprisonment and a $24,000 fine.
• Offences for false testimony, bribing or interfering with a witness, and destroying documents.
• s32: a witness cannot be sued for defamation over evidence given. s30: a witness cannot be sacked for giving it.
• Private hearings and publication restrictions where required (ss19, 19A, 19B).

The power is not theoretical. In March 2026 the Governor of Western Australia issued letters patent under the 1968 Act establishing a Royal Commission, jointly with the Commonwealth through matching letters patent, expressly declaring that s18 applies. That joint model would let one commission examine all four tracks — three of them state, one of them federal — which no previous inquiry could do.

Why not a fifth review

Four reviews have reported. A fifth without additional powers would work under the same constraints as the previous four.

• None could require documents from more than one part of the system.
• None could protect the people whose evidence matters most. People who have been through these cases are restricted in what they can say publicly and can be sued for defamation; ss30 and 32 remove both risks for evidence given to a commission.
• None could obtain case-level records. A commission with search powers under s18 can obtain what is needed to answer the questions at section 14.

14. What the commission should examine

Matters to be inquired into

• The making of temporary restraining orders, including when a hearing is held without the accused there and on what basis.
• Whether and how an application is checked before a temporary order is made, and what the accused is told or asked at any point beforehand.
• How orders are served — in person, taken to have occurred under s55, by substituted service under s60, by telephone order under ss19 to 24, or as police orders under s30A — and whether the accused understood what had been made.
• The 21-day conversion of an unopposed temporary order into a two-year order, and why people do not object.
• The interval between temporary order and hearing, its causes, and its effect on arrangements for children.
• The conduct of the hearing — the civil standard applied to an order carrying criminal liability, the non-application of the rules of evidence, and postponement pending criminal charges.
• What follows where an allegation is not sustained, and whether any mechanism exists or should exist under state law to examine knowingly false or misleading statements.
• The interaction between the four tracks, including the route available to a person seeking to restore contact.
• Access to representation on both sides, the scope and funding of the Domestic Violence Legal Unit and of services for accused people, and how grants of aid are decided.
• The means and merit tests as applied to restraining order matters, and whether a person facing an order that removes them from their home and their children should face a merit test at all.
• Enforcement outcomes, including breach prosecutions, sentencing and the operation of s61I.
• Delay in the Family Court of Western Australia and its causes, including how many hearings the court can run, judicial and registrar resourcing, and case management.
• The child protection track — removals with and without warrant under ss35 and 37, how the 2- and 3-working-day limits are met in practice, how long protection orders run, outcomes for children, and the position of Aboriginal children in particular.
• The implementation status of the 2014 Law Reform Commission recommendations and those of the WA Ombudsman.

Data to be obtained

All of the figures listed at section 7, plus outcomes for children in the protection system, and what happens to people on both sides after an order is made.

The commission should report within 18 months, with a first report at nine months on matters that could be changed by law straight away.

15. The party’s position

Sovereign Australia’s position is that a system which determines where children live and who they see should be timely, should be measured, and should hear from both sides before it decides. We owe it to families to have the best system we are capable of building, and the first step is finding out how the present one actually works.

Sovereign Australia will establish a Royal Commission into family law, family violence restraining orders, child support and child protection in Western Australia, on the terms at section 14, reporting within 18 months with a first report at nine.

This memo does not propose the remedies. Identifying them is the work of the commission, on evidence it has the power to obtain and this memo does not.

The party’s broader family policy — the federal Royal Commission commitment, legal aid allocated on need rather than gender, child support reassessment within 30 days, the end of passport cancellation where a payment plan is being met, and a Ministry for Families — is at Family Law & VROs and Strengthening Families.

16. Summary

Four systems, four courts, four laws, four timetables. An order can be applied for at no cost and granted without the accused being told, asked to respond, or asked for their side. It becomes permanent after 21 days if nobody objects, with no hearing and no finding, and carries criminal liability including mandatory imprisonment on a third breach. Objecting does not pause it. Where it restricts contact with children, the way back is a separate case in a different court at a cost in six figures. On the child protection track the State can remove a child without a warrant. Only that track has deadlines written into law.

Almost none of it is measured. Four reviews have reported since 2014 and three Commonwealth Acts have followed since 2023, none of which could alter the state law. The recommendation that would allow a false allegation to be examined was made and has not been enacted.

Western Australia holds its own family law jurisdiction, holds full Royal Commission powers under the Royal Commissions Act 1968, and issued letters patent for a Royal Commission in March 2026. The power exists, the most recent use of it was four months ago, and the subject has not been examined by a body holding it.

Sovereign Australia’s position is that the families passing through these systems are owed better than a process nobody has measured.

17. Sources

1. Restraining Orders Act 1997 (WA) — s10A family violence restraining orders; ss19 to 24 telephone applications, telephone hearings and telephone orders, including a police officer’s power to require a person to remain in a place and to arrest and detain for up to two hours to facilitate service; s16 an order coming into force when served; s30A police orders; s55 service including where an order is taken to have been served; s57 a copy being sufficient; s60 substituted service; s58 appeals to the District Court; s61 breach and the penalty scale; s61I mandatory imprisonment on a third breach within two years. Cited in sections 2, 6, 8 and 14.
2. Magistrates Court of Western Australia — restraining orders information and Factsheet 49: no filing fee; lodgement at any court; the option to request a first hearing without the accused there; effect on service; the 21-day objection period and automatic conversion to a two-year order; listing within one to two weeks, or 24 to 48 hours where urgent. Practitioner guidance on contested hearings — the civil standard, the accuser bearing the burden of proof, the non-application of the rules of evidence, postponement pending related criminal charges, two-year orders with unlimited extensions. Cited in sections 2, 6 and 9.
3. Legal Aid Western Australia — Domestic Violence Legal Unit scope (women, children and men in same-sex relationships), advice, online lodgement of applications, court representation through the duty lawyer service, the daily duty lawyer at Perth Magistrates Court, and the Stronger Women program including court representation; the statement that other Legal Aid WA services provide advice to other people in limited circumstances; and that a grant of aid will not usually be made where a duty lawyer service can help. Magistrates Court of Western Australia, FVRO conferencing — the RESTORE program, the Joondalup respondent duty lawyer service, and Fremantle Community Legal Centre court representation. Cited in section 9.
4. Family Law Act 1975 (Cth) and Family Court Act 1997 (WA); Family Court of Western Australia — Western Australia retaining its own family law jurisdiction; family dispute resolution and its exemptions; interim hearings, family reports and Independent Children’s Lawyers; and approximately 55 per cent of matters seeking orders about children. Cited in sections 3 and 6.
5. Children and Community Services Act 2004 (WA); Children’s Court of Western Australia, protection and care proceedings — the Department of Communities applying for a warrant without the parents present; s37 removal without warrant where a child is at immediate and major risk; s36 the requirement to make a protection application no more than 2 working days after a child is taken; the Court’s requirement to endeavour to list within 3 working days; the grounds on which a child is in need of protection, including exposure to family violence; the requirement that an order be better for the child than no order; the four kinds of protection order; interim orders; s180 legal representation of the child; and s169 appeals. Cited in sections 1, 5, 6, 8, 12 and 14.
6. Royal Commissions Act 1968 (WA) — establishment by letters patent with the advice of Executive Council; power to summon and compel evidence and documents; s18 search warrants issued by a judge of the Supreme Court; contempt punishable by 2 years imprisonment and a $24,000 fine; offences for false testimony, bribery of a witness and destroying documents; s30 protection of a witness from dismissal; s32 bar on defamation proceedings; ss19, 19A and 19B private hearings and publication restrictions. Cited in sections 10 and 13.
7. Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, Western Australia Commission — letters patent issued by the Governor of Western Australia under the Royal Commissions Act 1968, March 2026, as a joint Commonwealth–State commission established by matching letters patent, with a declaration that s18 applies. Cited in section 13.
8. Joint Select Committee on Australia’s Family Law System — appointed September 2019, four reports, final report November 2021; 29 recommendations directed at delays, costs and enforceability; the recommendation for procedures to investigate claims that a party has wilfully misled the court; the term of reference concerning interaction with state and territory family violence laws. Australian Government response, January 2023. Australian Law Reform Commission, Report 135, Family Law for the Future (2019). Explanatory Memorandum to the Family Law Amendment Bill 2024, summarising both inquiries as identifying extensive court delays, complex legislation and inadequate protection. Cited in sections 8, 10, 11 and 12.
9. Family Law Amendment Act 2023 (Cth) — assent 6 November 2023, main provisions 6 May 2024; removal of the presumption of equal shared parental responsibility at s61DA and the equal time provisions at s65DAA; replacement of the s60CC factors; Independent Children’s Lawyers; replacement of s121 with Part XIVB. Family Law Amendment (Information Sharing) Act 2023 (Cth). Family Law Amendment Act 2024 (Cth) — assent 10 December 2024; property and financial framework, disclosure, costs, and a review required by law after three years. Cited in sections 3 and 11.
10. Ombudsman Western Australia, investigation into issues associated with violence restraining orders and their relationship with family and domestic violence fatalities — 11,352 breach hearings, 8,147 charges, 2,676 alleged offenders and 5,424 victims. Law Reform Commission of Western Australia, Enhancing Family and Domestic Violence Laws, Final Report (2014). Western Australia Police Force crime statistics 2024–25 — more than 42,000 family and domestic violence offences involving assault or threatening behaviour, approximately 115 a day. Cited in sections 6, 8 and 10.
11. Services Australia — child support assessed administratively on last known taxable income, with collection powers including deductions from wages and departure prohibition orders. Sovereign Australia Party, Family Law & Policy (op-family) — the Royal Commission commitment, legal aid on need rather than gender, child support reassessment within 30 days, no passport cancellation where a payment plan is met, the Ministry for Families, and the indicative cost of family court cases above $100,000 a party. Cited in sections 4, 9 and 15.