When Police Come To Your Door
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
There is a lot of confident advice circulating about what to say when Police come to the front door. This extract from the excellent series "Mr InBetween" is a great take on it, but maybe not the best advice.
The underlying law is real and worth understanding. But the popular versions of it are a mix of sound principle, garbled citation, and, for anyone involved in a family violence matter, advice that could actively damage you. So let's do this properly.
Before we start: this is general information about the law, not legal advice, and police powers differ between states and territories. If something is happening at your door right now, cooperate, stay calm, and get advice afterwards.
The principle: the implied licence
Australian common law protects the home unusually strongly, and it does so through a quiet little doctrine called the implied licence.
In Halliday v Nevill (1984) 155 CLR 1, the High Court explained that where a path is open, the gate unlocked, and there is no sign forbidding entry, the law implies a licence for a member of the public, including a police officer, to walk up to the front door and knock. That is it. Up the path, knock, ask. The licence does not extend to searching, wandering the property, or entering the house.
The second half of the doctrine is the important one: an implied licence can be revoked. You can withdraw it, and once you do, a person who stays becomes a trespasser.
That was the issue in Kuru v State of New South Wales (2008) 236 CLR 1. Six officers attended a Sydney flat after a report of a disturbance. By the time they arrived the argument was over and the woman had left. Mr Kuru let them look around, told them she had gone, gave them his sister's phone number, and repeatedly asked them to leave. They refused. What followed involved capsicum spray, handcuffs, and Mr Kuru spending hours in a cell in his underwear.
The High Court held, by majority, that the police had neither statutory nor common law justification for remaining once he had asked them to go.
A correction worth making, because the figure gets quoted carelessly: Mr Kuru was awarded $418,265 in the District Court. The Court of Appeal then set that judgment aside entirely. The High Court allowed his appeal on liability and remitted the damages questions back to the Court of Appeal. So the accurate statement is that a trial court assessed his loss at $418,265 and the High Court vindicated his legal position, not that the High Court handed him a cheque.
For an unvarnished illustration of what unlawful entry can cost, New South Wales v Ibbett (2006) 229 CLR 638 is the better example. Two plain-clothes officers pursued Mrs Ibbett's son into her garage; one rolled under the closing roller door and pointed a firearm at her in her own home. The charges against her son were later withdrawn. The trial judge awarded $75,000; the Court of Appeal increased it to $100,000, including $45,000 in exemplary damages; the High Court dismissed the State's appeal. The exemplary component exists precisely to mark judicial disapproval and to bring home to those responsible for the police force that this conduct is not acceptable.
That is the genuine principle underneath all the doorstep advice, and it is a good one. Your home is not a public space, and an officer standing on your doormat is not automatically entitled to cross it.
Three citations that get muddled
These three errors are repeated constantly online, and repeating them yourself will make you look uninformed at exactly the wrong moment.
Hindering police in NSW is section 546C of the Crimes Act 1900, not 546E. It covers resisting or hindering an officer in the execution of their duty, with a maximum of 12 months' imprisonment and/or 10 penalty units. Note the phrase in the execution of their duty. It does real work, and it is why the lawfulness of what the officer was doing can matter.
Victoria's entry-to-arrest power is section 459A of the Crimes Act 1958, not the Summary Offences Act. It permits entry to arrest a person believed on reasonable grounds to have committed a serious indictable offence or to have escaped custody, using reasonable force if necessary.
And the significant one: NSW LEPRA section 82 is headed "Entry by invitation." It is routinely described as a blanket family violence entry power that overrides your refusal. It is not quite that. It permits entry where an officer reasonably believes a domestic violence offence has been, is being, or is likely to be committed, and a person who apparently resides there invites them in. Subsection (2) says an invitation alone is not enough if an occupier expressly refuses and no other authority applies. But subsection (3) provides that where the invitation comes from a person the officer believes to be the victim, the officer may enter regardless of your refusal.
Which means your refusal is not the only variable. Someone else in that house can let them in, and if the officer believes that person is a victim, your objection does not stop it. That is exactly the distinction on which Kuru turned under the predecessor provision.
The four doorways refusal does not close
Consent matters only where consent is what police are relying on. Where a statutory power applies, your view is legally irrelevant. Broadly, and with variations between jurisdictions:
Arrest. NSW: LEPRA s 10, entry to arrest or detain, or to execute a warrant. Victoria: Crimes Act s 459A, on the higher serious-indictable threshold.
Emergency or breach of the peace. NSW: LEPRA s 9, where an officer believes on reasonable grounds that a breach of the peace is occurring or likely and immediate entry is necessary, or to prevent significant physical injury. Queensland has equivalents under the Police Powers and Responsibilities Act.
Family violence. NSW: LEPRA Part 6. Victoria: section 157 of the Family Violence Protection Act 2008 confers substantial warrantless entry and search powers. Every jurisdiction has something in this space, and they are deliberately broad.
Standing obligations. Bail conditions, firearms licensing, parole, and existing court orders can all carry their own entry or inspection powers that you agreed to or that attach to you by operation of law.
If you are a respondent in a family violence matter, read this part twice
This is where the general advice becomes dangerous for our readers specifically.
Most doorstep scripts are written for a generic reader with something to hide. If you are a respondent to a protection order application, particularly one you believe to be untrue, your situation is close to the opposite. You have nothing to hide, and everything to lose from appearing to hide something.
Consider what actually happens if you deploy a scripted refusal at a family violence callout.
Legally, it probably fails. The powers above are wide, and if there is a complainant inside inviting them in, s 82(3) or its equivalent settles it.
Evidentially, it is worse than failing. Police attendance notes are written that night. They are frequently annexed to affidavits. Nine months later, in a contested hearing, a line reading "the respondent refused entry and declined to answer questions" sits in the bundle doing quiet damage, and no amount of explaining that you were exercising a common law right will fully undo the impression. Magistrates are human. A recitation of legal doctrine through a screen door does not read as principled. It reads as evasive.
There is a deeper point here too. If your case is that the allegations are untrue, then your single most valuable asset across the whole proceeding is the consistency between what you say and how you behave. Someone who is calm, courteous, and open with police at 11pm, who says "come in, ask me anything, here is my phone," is building the record that supports their account. Someone who lawyers up at the threshold is building a different record.
Integrity is not just an internal virtue. In litigation, it is also the most durable form of evidence you have.
What is reasonable to do
None of this means you have no rights. It means using them proportionately.
Never physically obstruct. Do not block the doorway, do not push, do not close a door on a foot. That is s 546C territory, and it converts a bad night into a criminal charge.
Ask what it is about. "We have had a call about you" is not a legal basis for anything. It is entirely reasonable, and not remotely obstructive, to ask what has happened, and whether they are asking to come in or telling you they are coming in. If they are relying on a power, they can name it. That is their job, not yours to guess.
Understand that consent is a decision, not an accident. "Mind if we come in?" is a genuine question with a genuine answer. Just be clear that in a family violence context, saying yes is very often the right answer, for your own reasons rather than theirs.
Write it down afterwards. Time, names, badge numbers, what was said, what was asked, who was present. Contemporaneous notes are worth more than memory, and if something was done unlawfully, that record is what a lawyer will need. Kuru and Ibbett were both won long after the night in question, on evidence.
Get advice the next morning. From a lawyer, a community legal centre, or the duty solicitor.
The point
The law here is genuinely protective. Your home is not a car and not a footpath, the implied licence is narrow, and officers who exceed it can and do face real consequences.
But the lesson of these cases is not that there is a magic sentence which keeps police out. It is that the boundary between lawful and unlawful is fine, contextual, and frequently determined years later by a court looking at the evidence. Which is to say, it is not something you can control in the moment on your doorstep.
What you can control is how you conduct yourself. Calm, courteous, consistent, and the same person at the door at 11pm as you are in the witness box eighteen months later.
That is not just better ethics. In a contested matter, it is better strategy.
Nothing in this article is legal advice. Police powers vary significantly between states and territories, legislation changes, and the application of any provision depends entirely on the facts. If you are dealing with a live matter, get proper advice from a lawyer or your local community legal centre.
Downloads to print out and tape to the inside of your front door
NSW oriented PDF
More generic simple script
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