Prove it once
A protection order made anywhere in Australia has been automatically recognised everywhere since 2017. The evidence behind it is not. The same violence is proved separately to a court, a payment provider, Centrelink, a housing authority and an employer.
Steps this would change
- Person leaving family violence obtains protection, income and housing — Assemble evidence for the Leaving Violence Program
- Person leaving family violence obtains protection, income and housing — Apply for priority housing
- Person leaving family violence obtains protection, income and housing — Crisis payment from Centrelink
Rationale
What has already been fixed. Under the National Domestic Violence Order Scheme, a protection order made anywhere in Australia on or after 25 November 2017 is automatically recognised and enforceable everywhere. A person who moves interstate does not re-apply and does not re-tell their story to a second court. It is one of only two instances in this database of the partial-national pattern being genuinely resolved.
What has not. The order travels; the evidence does not, and neither does recognition between the programs that sit around it.
The same person, having left the same relationship, separately establishes what happened to:
- a court, for the protection order;
- the Leaving Violence Program provider, which requires evidence of violence and of financial stress — an order, a court order, a police report, or a service referral with risk assessment and safety plan;
- Services Australia, for a crisis payment;
- a housing authority, for priority status, which requires third-party evidence of urgent need;
- and an employer, if they use family violence leave.
Five bodies. Each test is defensible on its own, each was written by people trying to be careful with public money, and none of them was designed with the others in view.
What it costs. Not primarily time — the process map shows 180 days on the critical path, and the evidence steps are not the longest. The cost is that each test requires the person to describe the violence again, to a new stranger, in a new format, at the point of highest risk, while also finding somewhere to sleep.
The proposal. Mutual recognition between the tests, in the direction that already works: a protection order, or a completed family violence service risk assessment, should be sufficient evidence for the Leaving Violence Program, for priority housing and for a crisis payment, without further substantiation. Each body keeps its own decision. What it stops doing is re-establishing the same fact.
Who acts: the Commonwealth for the payments, the states for housing — the same combination as the order scheme, which they managed in 2017.
What is being traded away
The breadth of the current tests is a feature, and mutual recognition could narrow it. The Leaving Violence Program deliberately accepts a service referral instead of police involvement, because requiring a police report excludes people who cannot safely go to police — which is many of them. A "prove it once" rule built around the protection order as the common currency would make the order the de facto gate, and that would be worse than what exists now. Any version of this must run the other way: the widest accepted evidence becomes sufficient everywhere, never the narrowest.
Shared evidence means shared records about people at risk. Information about a person's experience of violence, held across a payment agency, a housing authority and a contracted provider, is exactly the information that must not leak — including to a perpetrator who may have access to a shared address, a household member's account, or in some cases to systems through their own work. Family violence information sharing schemes exist and have been the subject of sustained concern for this reason. Consent-based, person-controlled sharing is the only defensible form.
Different tests are asking different questions. The court asks whether an order should be made against a particular person. The payment asks whether this applicant is in financial stress because of violence. Housing asks about urgency of need. Collapsing the evidence risks collapsing the questions, and a single finding used for all three will be fought harder, by respondents, in the forum with the lowest procedural protection.
And this database should be careful about its own framing here. The people in this process are not applicants navigating red tape; they are people at risk of being killed. Elapsed days are the wrong headline. The 60 day estimate above is the smallest part of what repeated disclosure costs, and treating it as the measure would misdescribe the harm.
Precedent
The National Domestic Violence Order Scheme is the precedent and it is in the same domain: since 25 November 2017 an order made in any jurisdiction is automatically recognised and enforceable in every other. Australia has already decided that a person should not have to re-prove this to be protected.
Sources
- Attorney-General's Department, National Domestic Violence Order Scheme: orders made on or after 25 November 2017 automatically recognised and enforceable nationally
- Department of Social Services, Leaving Violence Program evidence requirements: financial stress, plus a service referral with risk assessment and safety plan, or an apprehended violence order, court order or police report
- NSW Social Housing Eligibility and Allocations Policy Supplement: priority housing requires evidence of urgent need
- Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth): 10 days paid family and domestic violence leave