A Royal Commission Into Family Law And FVROs

Sovereign Australia will establish a Royal Commission into family law, family violence restraining orders and the family court system in Western Australia. This memo sets out the case for it: how the system operates, what it publishes about its own performance, what four previous reviews found, and why none of them could fix it.

1. 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.
• There is no filing fee for a family violence restraining order application in Western Australia.
• An interim order becomes a final two-year order automatically if the respondent does not object within 21 days of service.
• Breach is a criminal offence carrying up to 2 years imprisonment and a $24,000 fine for a first offence, and mandatory imprisonment for a third breach 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 matters before the Family Court of Western Australia seek parenting orders.
• Family law proceedings cost upwards of $100,000 a party.

Figures pending for a later version: family violence restraining orders granted annually in Western Australia, the proportion made in the respondent’s absence, prisoners held with breach of a restraining order as the most serious offence, and time from filing to final hearing in the Family Court of Western Australia.

2. How the system performs

Volume is published. Almost nothing about how the system performs is.

What is published: 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. The WA Ombudsman recorded 11,352 breach hearings, 8,147 charges, 2,676 alleged offenders and 5,424 victims across its investigation period. The Family Court of Western Australia reports that about 55 per cent of its matters seek parenting orders.

What is not published, and cannot be obtained from public data:

• Family violence restraining orders applied for and granted each year in Western Australia.
• The proportion made in the absence of the respondent.
• The proportion that become final by the 21-day rule rather than after a hearing.
• Time from interim order to contested final hearing, by registry.
• Outcomes at contested hearing — how often an order is confirmed, varied or cancelled.
• Persons in custody with breach of a restraining order as the most serious offence, and how many are held under the mandatory provision at s61I.
• What happens to parenting arrangements after an interim order, and how long contact remains suspended.

Each of those figures is generated by the system in the ordinary course of its operation. None is reported. A jurisdiction that publishes how many offences were recorded, but not how many orders were made without hearing the respondent or how long the respondent waited, cannot be measured against its own performance — and neither can any proposal to change it.

The absence is itself a finding: no review conducted to date has been able to measure the operation of the Act, only describe it.

3. Separation runs on three tracks

Separation is a fact rather than a legal step. Nothing is filed and no court is notified. What follows runs on three separate tracks, in different courts, under different Acts, on different timetables, and they are not coordinated with one another.

• 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 de facto couples.
• Property and child support — the Family Court for property, and Services Australia for child support, assessed administratively rather than judicially.

An order made on one track has effects on the other two. There is no mechanism requiring the court that makes it to consider those effects, and no mechanism requiring the other courts to review it.

4. The order

An application for a family violence restraining order is lodged in person at any Magistrates Court registry. There is no fee. No lawyer is required. The applicant completes a form and an affidavit setting out the conduct alleged.

The form allows the applicant to request that the first hearing be held in the absence of the respondent. This is a checkbox, not an exceptional procedure. Where that is requested, the magistrate hears the applicant’s evidence and decides whether to make an interim order without the respondent present, without notice, and without any account from him.

Most applications are listed within one to two weeks. Urgent applications can be heard within 24 to 48 hours.

If granted, the interim order takes effect when police serve it. From that moment it is enforceable, and breach is a criminal offence. An interim order can exclude the respondent from the family home regardless of ownership or tenancy, and can restrict or prohibit contact with children named in it.

5. Twenty-one days

After service, the respondent has 21 days to lodge an objection. This is the only step available to him at this stage.

If he does not object within 21 days, the interim order becomes a final order for two years. No hearing is held. No evidence is tested. No finding is made.

If he does object, the matter is listed for a contested final-order hearing. The Act sets no maximum period between the making of the interim order and that hearing, and listing times are not published by registry, so the interval cannot be measured from public data.

Throughout that period the interim order remains in force with its full effect, including any restriction on contact with children. An interval of many months is therefore not a departure from the process; the process contains nothing that would prevent it.

Throughout that period the interim order remains in force with its full effect, including any restriction on contact with children.

6. Delay, on every track

Delay is not a side effect of this system. On each of the three tracks, elapsed time changes the outcome, and on none of them is there a statutory limit.

The order

An interim family violence restraining order takes effect on service. Where the respondent objects, the matter proceeds to a contested final hearing. The Restraining Orders Act 1997 (WA) sets no maximum period between those two events. Throughout the interval the order operates in full, including any exclusion from the home and any restriction on contact with children. The order was made on one account, without a response from the respondent, and remains in force until the hearing occurs.

An interval of many months is not a departure from the process. The process contains nothing that would prevent it.

The children

Interim parenting arrangements established early become the status quo against which a final hearing measures any change. The longer the interval, the stronger the argument that the existing arrangement should not be disturbed. Elapsed time therefore operates as a determinant of outcome in its own right, independently of the merits, and it does so in favour of whichever arrangement the interim order created.

About 55 per cent of Family Court of Western Australia matters seek parenting orders. Time to hearing is not published by that court.

Property and child support

Property proceedings run on their own timetable, ordinarily behind the parenting matter, so a separated couple can remain financially entangled for years after separation — unable to refinance, sell, or settle.

Child support is assessed administratively on the last known taxable income. Where income has fallen, the assessment lags the change, and the debt accrues at the old rate while the reassessment is processed. Enforcement — garnishee, departure prohibition orders — operates against the assessed figure rather than the actual one.

What the reviews found, and what they could not measure

Both Commonwealth reviews of the family law system — the Australian Law Reform Commission in 2019 and the Joint Select Committee across 2019 to 2021 — identified extensive court delays. The Joint Select Committee’s second interim report directed 29 recommendations at delays, costs and enforceability. The Commonwealth reported a 17.8 per cent reduction in the pending caseload of the federal family law courts as at 2 September 2022 following case management changes.

That figure is a federal court measure. The Family Court of Western Australia and the Magistrates Court of Western Australia do not publish equivalent figures, so no comparable statement can be made about this state, in either direction.

The compounding effect is the part no single review has examined. A family separated in Western Australia can be simultaneously subject to an order made without the respondent being heard, awaiting a contested hearing with no statutory deadline, operating under interim parenting arrangements that harden with every month, financially entangled in unresolved property, and assessed for child support on an income no longer earned. Each track has its own timetable and none of them accounts for the others.

7. Breach

Breach of a restraining order is an offence under s61 of the Restraining Orders Act 1997 (WA). Police must arrest a person they reasonably suspect of breaching an order. The offence is prosecuted by police, and the protected person cannot withdraw it — consent to contact is not a defence, and a person protected by an order cannot lawfully authorise its breach.

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

An order made without the respondent being heard, and made final without a hearing where unopposed, carries the same criminal liability as one made after a contested hearing, including the mandatory imprisonment provision at s61I.

8. The children are a different court

Western Australia is the only state that did not refer its family law powers to the Commonwealth. It has its own court — the Family Court of Western Australia — exercising federal jurisdiction for married couples and state jurisdiction under the Family Court Act 1997 (WA) for de facto couples and most children’s matters.

The jurisdictional consequence is as follows. A restraining order that restricts contact with children is made by the Magistrates Court, and contact cannot be restored in that court. Contact is a parenting matter, and a parenting matter is heard in the Family Court of Western Australia, on a separate application, on its own timetable, at the applicant’s own cost.

Two features compound this. Interim parenting arrangements established early tend to become the status quo against which a final hearing measures any change, so time itself becomes a determinant of outcome. And the 2023 amendments removed the presumption of equal shared parental responsibility from the federal Act.

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

9. Mediation, and the untested allegation

Family dispute resolution is ordinarily required before a parenting application, subject to exemptions including where family violence is alleged. An allegation therefore does two things at once: it supports the order, and it can remove the requirement to attempt resolution before litigation.

Western Australia operates a shuttle mediation program in restraining order matters, in which applicants are represented by the Domestic Violence Legal Unit and respondents by Community Legal Centres. It runs at the Central Law Courts and at the Armadale, Bunbury, Fremantle and Joondalup registries. It is not available at every registry, and it does not operate at the interim stage.

Where an allegation is made in the course of these processes — of substance abuse, of risk to a child — the practical burden of disproving it falls on the person accused, at his own expense, through testing or assessment he must arrange and pay for. A result that does not support the allegation attracts no consequence for the allegation and does not automatically alter an order already in force.

The Joint Select Committee on Australia’s Family Law System recommended the implementation of procedures to enable the investigation of claims that a party has wilfully misled the court. No such procedure has been enacted.

10. The cost asymmetry

Set the two sides of the process against each other.

Filing fee position from the Magistrates Court of Western Australia. Family law proceeding cost from the party’s published family policy. The comparison is of process cost and does not characterise any individual matter.

A person without the means to fund Family Court proceedings has no route to contest the parenting consequences of an order, irrespective of its merits.

11. 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. Its second interim report made 29 recommendations. Parliamentary committees may compel evidence but do not hold Royal Commission powers of search, and cannot confer the witness protections at ss30 and 32 of the WA Act.

12. 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 — assent 6 November 2023, in force 6 May 2024. Repealed the presumption of equal shared parental responsibility (s61DA) and the related equal-time and substantial-and-significant-time provisions (s65DAA). Replaced the s60CC best-interests factors with a new list. Clarified the role of Independent Children’s Lawyers. Also replaced s121 with Part XIVB, restructuring the restriction on publishing accounts of proceedings.
• Family Law Amendment (Information Sharing) Act 2023 — a framework for sharing family violence, child abuse and neglect risk information between the family law courts and information sharing agencies.
• Family Law Amendment Act 2024 — assent 10 December 2024. Property and financial framework, disclosure obligations, costs orders, protected confidences, and a statutory review of the property reforms three years after commencement.

The repeal of the equal shared parental responsibility presumption removed a starting point that favoured shared decision-making, which is a movement away from the position commonly urged by separated parents seeking shared care. It is recorded here for completeness. The reforms addressed the federal parenting framework; they did not address the matters identified at section 5.

13. What was not

Three matters remain unaddressed.

First: no procedure exists to investigate a party who wilfully misleads the court. The Joint Select Committee recommended one. It has not been enacted. An allegation that does not withstand examination therefore attracts no consequence, and the cost of disproving it falls entirely on the person accused.

Second: not one of the three Commonwealth Acts altered a state restraining order. They could not. The Restraining Orders Act 1997 (WA) is state legislation. Every feature identified in this memo — application at no cost, the first hearing available in the respondent’s absence, effect on service, automatic conversion to a final order after 21 days without a hearing, and no statutory limit on the time to a contested hearing — is untouched by all of it, and has not been reviewed since 2014.

Third: the interface between the two systems has never been examined by a body able to compel evidence from both. An order made in the Magistrates Court determines whether a parent sees their children, but the parenting question belongs to the Family Court of Western Australia, on a separate application, at the respondent’s own cost. No inquiry has held the power to examine both sides of that transfer.

14. Why a Royal Commission, and why Western Australia

Western Australia is the only state that never referred its family law powers to the Commonwealth. It has its own Family Court, exercising federal jurisdiction for married couples and state jurisdiction under the Family Court Act 1997 (WA) for de facto couples. Restraining orders are wholly state law, under the Restraining Orders Act 1997 (WA).

Western Australia also holds full Royal Commission powers under the Royal Commissions Act 1968 (WA). The Governor issues letters patent under the Public Seal of the State with the advice and consent of Executive Council. No Commonwealth agreement is required.

The powers are substantive:

• Summons witnesses and compel evidence and documents.
• 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.
• Witness protections: s32 bars defamation proceedings; s30 protects a witness from dismissal by an employer.
• 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 complementary letters patent, expressly declaring that s18 applies.

That joint model is directly applicable here. Family law in Western Australia spans both jurisdictions. Complementary letters patent would allow one commission to examine the whole system — the state restraining order, the state and federal parenting jurisdiction, and the interface between them. No previous inquiry has been able to do that, because each was confined to one side of the line.

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

• None could compel production from both jurisdictions. A Royal Commission established under the WA Act, with complementary Commonwealth letters patent, can.
• None could protect the people whose evidence matters most. Parties to family law and restraining order proceedings are subject to publication restrictions and to potential defamation exposure. Section 32 of the WA Act bars defamation proceedings in respect of evidence given to a commission, and s30 protects a witness from dismissal by an employer.
• None could examine outcomes at the level of the case. A commission with search powers under s18 can obtain the records needed to establish what proportion of orders are made in the respondent’s absence, how long a contested hearing takes by registry, and what happens to parenting arrangements after an interim order — none of which is currently published.

15. Terms of reference

A Western Australian Royal Commission into the family and restraining order system would inquire into and report on:

• The making of interim family violence restraining orders, including the proportion made in the absence of the respondent, and the basis on which that course is taken.
• The 21-day automatic conversion of an unopposed interim order into a final two-year order, and whether a final order should require a hearing.
• Time from the making of an interim order to a contested final hearing, by registry, and the effect of that interval on parenting arrangements.
• Time to hearing and to final orders in the Family Court of Western Australia, in parenting and in property matters, and the causes of any delay including listing capacity, judicial and registrar resourcing, and case management practice.
• Whether statutory time limits should apply to each stage, and what resourcing would be required to meet them.
• The effect of delay on child support assessment and enforcement where income has changed.
• The interaction between restraining orders and parenting proceedings in the Family Court of Western Australia, including whether contact restrictions imposed by one court should be reviewable in that court.
• Access to representation for both parties, including legal aid allocation and the availability of shuttle mediation across registries.
• The consequences of allegations that are not sustained, and whether a procedure to investigate wilful misleading of the court should be established in state jurisdiction.
• Enforcement outcomes, including breach prosecutions, sentencing, and the operation of mandatory imprisonment under s61I.
• Data and transparency — what the Magistrates Court and the Family Court of Western Australia should be required to publish.
• The implementation status of the 2014 Law Reform Commission of Western Australia recommendations and those of the WA Ombudsman.

The commission should report within 18 months, with an interim report at nine months on matters capable of immediate legislative action.

16. 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 parties before it decides. We owe it to families to have the best system we are capable of building, and the first step in building it is finding out how the present one actually works.

Sovereign Australia will establish a Royal Commission into family law, family violence restraining orders and the family court system in Western Australia, on the terms at section 15, reporting within 18 months with an interim report at nine months on matters capable of immediate legislative action.

Five state-level measures do not require the commission to report first, because each is already established on the public record and each sits within Western Australian legislative competence:

• A statutory maximum period between the making of an interim order and a contested hearing, published and reported against by registry.
• Removal of the automatic conversion of an unopposed interim order into a final order. A final order should follow a hearing.
• Publication of restraining order statistics by the Magistrates Court — applications, grants, the proportion heard in the respondent’s absence, objections, outcomes and time to hearing — and equivalent reporting by the Family Court of Western Australia.
• A single case record visible to both courts, so an order affecting children is made with the parenting matter in view.
• Shuttle mediation available at every registry, and at the interim stage.

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 set out at Family Law & Policy. This memo is confined to the case for the Western Australian commission.

17. Summary

An order can be applied for at no cost, granted without the respondent present, and made final after 21 days with no hearing. It carries criminal liability including mandatory imprisonment on a third breach. Where it restricts contact with children, the route to restoring that contact is a separate proceeding in a different court at a cost in six figures. No stage of that sequence carries a statutory time limit, and elapsed time changes the outcome on every track.

Almost none of it is measured. The number of orders made in the respondent’s absence, the number that become final without a hearing, the time to a contested hearing, the outcomes at that hearing, and the number of people in custody for breach are all generated by the system and none is published.

Four reviews have reported since 2014. Three Commonwealth Acts have followed since 2023. None of them altered the state law, because none of them could. The accountability recommendation that would address untested allegations was made and has not been enacted. The state law has not been reviewed in twelve years.

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 exercise 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 this system are owed better than a process nobody has measured.

18. Sources

1. Royal Commissions Act 1968 (WA) — establishment by letters patent under the Public Seal of the State with the advice and consent of Executive Council; summons and compulsion of 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, fraud on a witness, preventing a witness from attending and destroying documents; s30 protection of a witness from dismissal by an employer; s32 bar on defamation proceedings; and ss19, 19A and 19B on private hearings and restrictions on recording and publication. Cited in sections 2 and 7.
2. 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 complementary letters patent, with a declaration that s18 applies. Cited as the current precedent for the mechanism in section 2.
3. Restraining Orders Act 1997 (WA) — s10A family violence restraining orders; s61 breach as a criminal offence and the penalty scale; s61I mandatory imprisonment on a third breach within two years. Magistrates Court of Western Australia, restraining orders information and Factsheet 49 — no filing fee; the option to request a first hearing in the absence of the respondent; effect on service; the 21-day objection period and automatic conversion to a final two-year order. Cited in sections 1, 5, 6 and 8.
4. 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. Cited in sections 1 and 3.
5. Law Reform Commission of Western Australia, Enhancing Family and Domestic Violence Laws, Final Report (2014) — the last review of Western Australian restraining order law. Cited in sections 3, 5 and 8.
6. Joint Select Committee on Australia’s Family Law System — appointed September 2019, four reports, final report tabled November 2021; 29 recommendations in the second interim report directed at delays, costs, enforceability and the family violence framework; the recommendation for procedures enabling investigation of claims that a party has wilfully misled the court; and the term of reference concerning interaction with state and territory family violence jurisdictions. Australian Government response, January 2023. Cited in sections 3, 4, 5 and 6.
7. Australian Law Reform Commission, Report 135, Family Law for the Future — An Inquiry into the Family Law System (2019). Cited in section 3.
8. Family Law Amendment Act 2023 (Cth) — Royal Assent 6 November 2023, principal provisions in force 6 May 2024; repeal of the presumption of equal shared parental responsibility at s61DA and of the equal time and substantial and significant time provisions at s65DAA; replacement of the s60CC best interests factors; clarification of the role of Independent Children’s Lawyers; and the replacement of s121 with Part XIVB. Family Law Amendment (Information Sharing) Act 2023 (Cth). Family Law Amendment Act 2024 (Cth) — Royal Assent 10 December 2024; property and financial framework, disclosure, costs orders, protected confidences and a statutory review three years after commencement. Cited in section 4.
9. Family Court of Western Australia, submission to the Joint Select Committee — approximately 55 per cent of matters seeking parenting orders; the shuttle mediation program operating at the Central Law Courts and the Armadale, Bunbury, Fremantle and Joondalup registries. Cited in sections 1 and 8.
10. Sovereign Australia Party, Family Law & Policy (op-family) — the Royal Commission commitment, the 21-day limit on ex parte orders, legal aid allocated on need rather than gender, and the indicative cost of family law proceedings in excess of $100,000 a party. Cited in sections 1 and 8.