DVO, AVO or protection order rules that apply to you in QLD

The difference between an AVO and a DVO in QLD is, for most practical purposes, a difference in names rather than a difference in effect.

Each state and territory calls these orders something slightly different, and people who move around, or whose relationship crossed a border, end up unsure what they are holding. What matters is simpler than the naming. Since 25 November 2017 an order made anywhere in Australia is recognised and enforceable everywhere in Australia, so if you came to Cairns from New South Wales with an order against you, it did not stay behind at the border.

What Queensland calls things

In Queensland the umbrella term is a domestic violence order, or DVO. Underneath that sit two things you are likely to encounter.

A temporary protection order is the short term one a magistrate can make while an application is still running. It does its job until the main application is decided.

A protection order is the final one. Queensland Courts describes most of them as lasting five years, though a magistrate can set a different period.

There are also two police issued documents that are not court orders but bind you in similar ways. A police protection notice counts as an application to a court and brings you to a court date. A police protection direction started statewide on 1 January 2026, runs for 12 months, and does not take you to court the way a notice does. Those two get confused constantly and they work very differently, so our page on police protection orders sets out how to tell which one you have.

What you might be holding from somewhere else

Other states and territories use their own terms. AVO is the one most Queenslanders have heard, because it is used in New South Wales. Other jurisdictions use different language again, including intervention orders.

You do not need to know the terminology of the state you came from. What you need to know is whether the order is still current, exactly what conditions are on it, and whether it has been varied since it was made. Those three things determine what binds you today.

An interstate order follows you to Queensland

Queensland Courts records that the National Domestic Violence Order Scheme commenced on 25 November 2017, and that under it an order issued in one jurisdiction is automatically recognised and enforceable in any other Australian state or territory.

The word automatically matters here, because nobody has to register anything or take any step to switch the order on in Queensland.

Queensland Courts identifies what is recognised as including domestic violence orders made by a court, which covers temporary protection orders, protection orders and varied orders, along with police protection notices and release conditions.

That has two practical consequences. Moving state does not reset anything, so if a condition said do not contact them, it still says that in Cairns.

Breaching an interstate order while you are in Queensland is also a matter for Queensland police and the Queensland courts, even though the order came from elsewhere.

If your order was made before 25 November 2017

Older orders are treated differently. Queensland Courts states that where an order was made before the scheme started, it can be declared to be a recognised interstate order and varied on the same form.

So an older order is not automatically covered in the same way, but there is a process to bring it in. If you are dealing with an order from before that date and you are not sure of its status, that is worth checking rather than assuming either way.

If you need to change an interstate order while you are in Queensland

There is a form for it. Queensland Courts identifies Form DV4A as the application to vary a recognised interstate order, sitting alongside Form DV4 for varying a Queensland order. Your signature on the declaration has to be witnessed by a Justice of the Peace or a Commissioner for Declarations, and Queensland Courts states there is no cost to apply.

The test is whether the change would adversely affect the safety, protection or wellbeing of the protected person or anyone named on it, and which state made the order does not change that. Our page on varying or revoking a domestic violence order covers how those applications are put together.

What to check this week if you have moved here with an order

Find the actual document rather than working from memory. Conditions are specific and people misremember them, usually in the direction that suits them.

Check whether it has an end date and whether that date has passed.

Check whether it was ever varied, because the version you were handed at the start may not be the version that binds you now.

And if there are children and family law arrangements involved, get advice on how the two fit together before you improvise a handover routine. That is where a lot of otherwise careful people come unstuck.

If you have an interstate order and you are now living in Cairns

The most common problem here is someone assuming that a move to another state loosened something, and finding out otherwise after a phone call they should not have made.

We act for respondents in domestic and family violence matters in Cairns and across Far North Queensland. If you are not certain what your order requires of you in Queensland, we can work it out with you.

If you have moved to Cairns with an order made in another state and you are not certain what it requires of you, speak with us.