Weaponised domestic violence orders - state sanctioned parental alienation

• It can bar a firearms licence for years. In NSW, anyone subject to an AVO within the past ten years cannot be licensed. In WA, disqualification runs for the life of the order plus five years.

• It can lead to a Working with Children Check being cancelled or refused.

• It must be considered by the family court when deciding where a child sleeps at night.

It is outrageous that men are so often told an order "without admissions" is no big deal. Men need to know that living with an AVO means being perpetually at risk of being charged with a criminal offence. All it takes is a breach - namely, any contact with the protected person that the order prohibits. And because children are automatically caught up in these orders, that prohibition usually extends to them too. For a father separated from his children, that means even a text wishing his own child happy birthday can constitute a breach. And a breach is a crime. He can be arrested. He can end up in jail.

This makes ordinary contact a minefield, no matter how careful a man tries to be. A determined ex-partner can turn up at his workplace with the children in tow. She can arrange for them to "bump into" him at the shops. However it happens, the moment he responds - waves, says hello, sends a text - he has breached the order. And just like that, Dad is safely out of the way. Behind bars.

In Weaponised David has dug out statistics, from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, drawing on ABS criminal court data showing about 39,600 defendants faced criminal courts in 2023-2024 with breaching a violence order as their principal offence. He points out that means more than one hundred people, every single day, walk into a criminal courtroom because of a document no criminal court ever issued.

"A document issued fast, in a civil court, on the civil standard, is the tripwire for mandatory prison. That is the hybrid. Civil to obtain. Criminal to break," he explains.

That design choice - civil to obtain, criminal to break - is the hinge the whole appalling system turns on. David does a magnificent job showing just how bizarre and dangerous it proves to be.

Much of it has nothing to do with violence

What makes my blood boil is that the public assumes this entire system exists to protect women from dangerous men. That is the story everyone has been told, and it is why almost no one questions how the system actually operates. But the reality is most of these orders have nothing to do with violence at all.

Nobody publishes what conduct lies behind the civil orders themselves, so the closest window is the criminal courts. In 2024, BOCSAR counted 37,916 domestic violence court finalisations in NSW. 54% involved an assault charge. 35% involved intimidation or stalking, a category BOCSAR's own research says typically involves threats, intimidation and verbal abuse, not stalking in any conventional sense. And 40% involved a charge of breaching an existing order. Many finalisations involve more than one type of charge, so these categories overlap. Of the assault finalisations, roughly one in three ended with no charge proven, either withdrawn or not proven.

Once a matter reaches the family court, the definition widens again. The Family Law Act defines family violence partly as behaviour that coerces or controls a family member, or "causes the family member to be fearful". There is no express requirement that the fear be reasonable. The examples run from assault to repeated derogatory taunts, all under one label.

The ever-expanding label "domestic violence" is doing enormous, undifferentiated work. It covers everything from a punch to claims of a heated argument over money, and the system responds to the label the same way, regardless of what actually happened.

None of this is new to the people who run the system. Australia's own Law Reform Commission said it out loud back in 2010: an interim order "may be made for a number of reasons that do not reflect the level of risk, or evidence, of family violence." That was fifteen years ago. Nothing has changed.