Respondents should be aware that last night, the Domestic and Family Violence Protection and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2016 was passed by the Queensland Parliament with amendment.

The current Domestic Violence Legislation has now been amended to include the following major changes:-

1. Police are required to consider what action should be taken following an investigation and expands the protection police are able to provide by enabling Police Protection Notices to protect a victim’s children, relatives and associates. The amendments also give police the power to include additional conditions in Police Protection Notices such as excluding an alleged perpetrator from the family home and/or prevent them contacting the victim or the children (unless there is a family law order in place permitting contact) until a court hearing;
2. If a Police Protection Notice is issued any weapons licence held by a respondent named in a Police Protection Notice is suspended for the duration of the notice;
3. The grounds for making a Domestic Violence Order have now been expanded and requires the Courts to consider explicitly requires courts to consider whether additional, more specific conditions should be included in the order on top of the mandatory conditions that the respondent must be of good behaviour  and must not commit domestic violence;
4. If a court does not specify the duration of a Protection Order, the order will remain in force for five years from when it is made. Previously, these order would only remain in place for 2 years. The clause also provides that courts can only make orders that last for less than five years if satisfied there are reasons for doing so;
5. The amendments require a Court to always consider any family law order that they are aware of and to always consider whether to exercise their powers to resolve any inconsistency between the order and the proposed DVO;
6. The amendments changes the name of Voluntary Intervention Orders to intervention orders. Once a respondent has agreed to an intervention order being made, they should comply with it in the same way as they should comply with other court orders and if they do not, the Court must consider a respondent’s non-compliance with an intervention order when deciding whether to make a Protection Order;
7. The amendments allow certain government and non-government service providers to share victim and perpetrator information in certain circumstances for the purpose of assessing risk and managing cases where there is a serious threat to a person’s life, health or safety because of domestic violence;
8. It introduces changes which will allow for increased national enforceability of protection orders; and
9. It  increases the maximum penalty for breaching a Police Protection Notice or a release condition from two years imprisonment or 60 penalty units, to three years imprisonment or 120 penalty units.