Section 145 (1) of the Domestic and Family Violence Protection Act 2012, allows the court not bound by the rules of evidence in a proceeding under that Act or any practice or procedures applying to courts of record) and may inform itself in any way it thinks appropriate.

This does not mean that the rules of evidence are to be ignored, by the legislative provision should be put into context.

The rules of evidence today represent the evolution of evidentiary rules which attempt to provide “a method of inquiry best calculated to prevent error and elicit truth”, R v War Pensions Entitlement Appeals Tribunal; ex parte Bott (1933) 50 CLR 228

“they do not exclude an obligation to accord procedural fairness. Nor do they have the effect that an order can be made without any proper basis the position is simply that the formal rules of evidence do not apply, so that would be open, for example, in an appropriate case to receive material which would ordinarily be excluded as hearsay, or to receive evidence in written form. But there must still be evidence, in the sense of there being some material put before the court which provides a rational basis for arriving at the state of satisfaction contemplated by s20, and it must be put before a court in a way which gives the opposition party the opportunity to challenge that evidence, and to put the opposite party’s case in relation to the matter” McGill DCJ in DMO v RPD [2009] QDC 92.

Of course, it should be bourne in mind that the onus is on the person seeking the order to prove that the requirements have been made out on the balance of probabilities.