The Royal Commission into Family Violence was the most ambitious public inquiry into intimate-partner and family violence ever held in Australia. Established by the Victorian Government in February 2015 after a 2014 election commitment, it produced 227 recommendations in March 2016. A decade on, our newsroom has tracked which reforms landed, which stalled, and where the system still leaves people exposed.
The Commission reshaped how Victoria responds to family violence — but the implementation curve has been uneven, and frontline workers tell us demand has outpaced funding from the start.
Why the Commission was called
The trigger was years of mounting evidence that Victoria’s response to family violence was fragmented, under-resourced and often dangerous. Coronial findings repeatedly flagged the same gaps: poor information-sharing between agencies, a child-protection system that worked separately from family-violence services, and police responses that varied by station. The Andrews government appointed Justice Marcia Neave AO to lead the inquiry, with Commissioners Patricia Faulkner AO and Tony Nicholson.
Public hearings ran across 2015. The final report, tabled in March 2016, ran to seven volumes and made 227 recommendations covering policing, courts, housing, perpetrator interventions, child wellbeing, Aboriginal-led responses, and the architecture of the service system itself.
Family Safety Victoria and The Orange Door
One of the Commission’s structural recommendations was a dedicated agency to drive reform. Family Safety Victoria was established in 2017 inside the Department of Premier and Cabinet (it later moved to the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing). Its remit included rolling out a network of intake hubs known as The Orange Door — Support and Safety Hubs that offer a single front door for women, children and families experiencing violence, and for people using violence who want help to change.
The first five Orange Doors opened in 2018. The network has since expanded across all 17 Department of Families, Fairness and Housing areas, with sites in Bendigo, Geelong, Heidelberg, Morwell, Frankston, Melton, Mildura and other centres. Family Safety Victoria reports the network has handled more than 800,000 contacts since launch.
Agency staff and partner organisations tell us the model is sound but the funding envelope has not kept pace with referrals, leading to wait times for non-crisis cases and pressure on specialist family-violence services that sit behind the Orange Door front end.
The MARAM framework
The Multi-Agency Risk Assessment and Management framework, known as MARAM, replaced the older Common Risk Assessment Framework in 2018. MARAM is now legislated under the Family Violence Protection Act 2008 (Vic) and applies to a prescribed list of services — health, education, justice, housing and community services among them.
The framework gives every prescribed worker a shared way to identify risk, assess severity, and act. It includes specialist tools for adult victims, children, adolescents using violence in the home, and people with disability. Practitioners we have spoken to credit MARAM with closing some of the assessment gaps the Commission identified, while noting the training load is heavy and uptake outside the specialist sector remains uneven.
Information-sharing schemes: FVISS and CISS
Two schemes rewired how agencies share information. The Family Violence Information Sharing Scheme (FVISS) commenced in 2018 and lets prescribed organisations share information with each other to assess and manage family-violence risk — overriding privacy barriers that the Commission found had cost lives. The Child Information Sharing Scheme (CISS) followed in 2018 and 2020, allowing prescribed bodies to share information about children’s wellbeing and safety.
Both schemes are bounded: they apply only to prescribed bodies, only for prescribed purposes, and they coexist with privacy law. The Commission for Children and Young People and the Family Violence Reform Implementation Monitor have flagged training gaps in their reviews. Even so, the schemes are widely seen as a structural win — they removed a barrier that for decades had been used as an excuse for inaction.
What has been implemented
By the government’s own count, all 227 recommendations were either delivered or substantially actioned by 2022. Independent monitors take a more nuanced view. Among the clearest wins are:
- The Orange Door network and the integration of intake across child protection, family violence and family services.
- MARAM legislation and the rollout of a shared risk language across prescribed sectors.
- FVISS and CISS, which removed legal blockers to information sharing in defined circumstances.
- Specialist Family Violence Courts, now in multiple Magistrates’ Court venues, with co-located support workers and applicant safety rooms.
- Expansion of perpetrator interventions, including Men’s Behaviour Change Programs and the Caring Dads program.
- Dhelk Dja, the Aboriginal-led 10-year agreement on family violence, which embeds self-determination in design and delivery.
- A standalone family-violence portfolio at Cabinet level — Victoria has had a Minister for Prevention of Family Violence since the Commission reported.
What remains unfinished
Recommendations are easier to count than to feel. Frontline workers we speak with point to several areas where the system still falls short:
- Crisis accommodation. Specialist refuge demand outstrips supply. Women and children are routinely housed in motels because beds are full.
- Rural and regional reach. Outside the major centres, the after-hours response is thin and travel times are long. Tom Whitford’s reporting from regional Victoria has flagged this repeatedly.
- Perpetrator accountability. Behaviour-change programs have long waitlists, completion rates are modest, and the system still relies heavily on victim-survivors to enforce intervention orders.
- Children as victims in their own right. The Commission was emphatic on this point. Resourcing of children’s specialist counselling and therapeutic responses has not matched the rhetoric.
- Workforce. Specialist family-violence practitioner roles are demanding, often poorly paid relative to the credentials required, and burnout is structural.
The Family Violence Reform Implementation Monitor, an independent statutory office, was wound up in mid-2024 after its legislated term ended. Its final report urged government to embed the reform inside business as usual rather than treat it as a finished project.
What it changed at the front end
For someone walking into a police station today, several things are different from a decade ago. Victoria Police has dedicated Family Violence Investigation Units in every division. Risk assessments use the L17 form linked to MARAM. Police can apply for Family Violence Safety Notices that act as interim intervention orders. Specialist Family Violence Courts handle applications with a trauma-informed bench and co-located legal and support workers. Information about a respondent’s history can, in defined circumstances, be shared without consent under FVISS to manage risk.
None of this means the system is safe. It means the architecture is better than it was. The Commission’s lasting contribution may be the simple proposition that family violence is a whole-of-government problem, not a private matter and not a job for police alone. That principle, more than any single recommendation, is what reshaped the system and what continues to drive ongoing investment, evaluation and reform.
Where to get help
If you or someone you know is in immediate danger, call 000. For confidential support and safety planning, Safe Steps (the Victorian 24/7 family violence response) is on 1800 015 188. 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) is the national counselling and information line. Men’s Referral Service (1300 766 491) supports men who want to stop using violence. The Orange Door network can be reached through orangedoor.vic.gov.au. For ongoing emotional support, Lifeline is 13 11 14, 13YARN (13 92 76) provides culturally safe support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and Beyond Blue is 1300 22 4636.
