Court Lists Australia

Today's list and tomorrow's list

Most visitors arrive with one of two questions. What is on today? What is on tomorrow?

The answer changes from state to state. Each court runs its own publishing timetable, and knowing that timetable saves a wasted trip.

Queensland splits it in two. Magistrates Court lists are published on the morning of the hearing at 6.45am, then refreshed at 8.45am to pick up overnight arrests. Supreme and District Court lists go up the evening before, no later than 6pm. So a Queensland Supreme Court list for tomorrow exists tonight, but a Queensland Magistrates Court list for tomorrow does not.

New South Wales works on a rolling window instead. Listings are searchable through the NSW Online Registry up to three weeks ahead and one week back. The data refreshes every 60 seconds. The Supreme Court also publishes a sorted daily list each afternoon from about 3.30pm for the next working day.

Victoria releases the Supreme Court daily hearing list from 3.40pm on weekdays. It then updates every 15 minutes until 6.30pm, and again at 8.30am, 9am and 9.30am on the day itself.

Tasmania publishes Magistrates Court daily lists at approximately 4.30pm for the following day.

Western Australia and South Australia publish through central portals that show the current sitting day. WA uses the eCourts portal for the Magistrates, District, Supreme, Family and Coroners Courts and the State Administrative Tribunal. SA lists are administered by the Courts Administration Authority.

The Federal Court of Australia posts the next business day's list at about 4.30pm across all eight registries.

The pattern is consistent enough to be useful. Tomorrow's court list usually appears in the late afternoon. Today's court list is usually settled by mid-morning. If your matter is time-critical, check twice.

Publishing times at a glance

Details can change after publication. A matter may be adjourned, vacated, relisted or moved to another courtroom. Always confirm with the registry before you travel.

How to read an Australian court list

A court list is the official daily timetable a court publishes. Different states call it a daily law list, a cause list or a case list. The document does the same job everywhere.

A typical entry gives you five things. The party names or case number. The courtroom. The start time. The presiding magistrate or judge. And a short code describing the type of appearance.

That last code is what confuses people most. It is worth learning.

Court list abbreviations explained

• HRG: Hearing. Evidence or argument is put before the court.
• MEN: Mention. A brief administrative appearance to update the court. Most first appearances are mentions. Nothing is usually decided.
• PLG or PLE: Plea of guilty, or plea. The accused formally answers the charge.
• DP: Directions or pre-trial. The court sets a timetable and gives procedural orders.
• F&S: Fixture and sentence. The matter has a fixed date, and sentencing is on foot.
• BA: Bail application. An application to grant, vary or revoke bail.
• PB: Plea and bail. A combined appearance.
• ARC: Adjourned for review of charge. Common in Victorian specialist lists.
• CMT: Committal. A Magistrates Court step that sends a serious charge up to a higher court.
• SEN: Sentence. The penalty is to be handed down.
• C/O: Callover. The court reviews a group of matters together to manage their progress.

Codes are not standardised nationally. The same three letters can mean different things in different states and at different court tiers. If a code on your list is unclear, ring the registry. Registry staff answer this question daily.

Can you search court listings by name?

Sometimes. It depends entirely on the state, and the honest answer is that only the official registry can do it.

New South Wales has the most complete name search in the country. The NSW Online Registry and the free Search NSW Court Lists app let you search by party name or case number, filtered by court, jurisdiction, presiding officer and listing type. Results cover three weeks ahead and one week back.

Western Australia offers the eCourts portal. It shows pending charges, charge numbers, future court dates, appearance times and court locations. Children's Court matters are excluded by law.

Victoria uses the CMS Portal Hearing Search for criminal and civil matters. You can search by case number or by the surname of the accused or respondent. Family violence and personal safety intervention order hearings are not searchable.

Queensland publishes its daily law lists as fixed documents. There is no public name search. You browse by courthouse instead.

South Australia runs CourtSA, but that portal is built for filing and case management by parties and practitioners. It requires registration. It is not a public daily list browser.

CourtListAU is organised by courthouse, not by person. Individual names in our listings are partially masked. That is a deliberate choice. Open justice means court business is public, but a permanently indexed, name-searchable record of every person who has ever been listed is a different thing entirely. If you need a definitive answer about a named party, go to the official registry.

Court lists versus court results

These are two different documents, and people regularly conflate them.

A court list is a schedule. It says what is listed, where and when. It is published before the hearing.

A court result is an outcome. It records the plea, the finding and the penalty. It is created after the hearing, and it is not added back into the list.

So if you are looking for a sentencing outcome, the daily list will not have it. Look instead at the published judgments. AustLII carries decisions from every Australian jurisdiction free of charge. Queensland Judgments publishes unreported District and Supreme Court decisions. The Supreme Court of Tasmania publishes sentencing remarks. Most state Supreme Courts publish selected judgments on their own websites.

Bear in mind that only a fraction of matters produce a written judgment. Summary matters in a Magistrates Court almost never do. For those, the registry that heard the case is the only reliable source.

Australian courts by the numbers

The scale behind the daily law lists is easy to underestimate. The figures below are drawn from two official sources. The first is the Australian Bureau of Statistics release Criminal Courts, Australia, 2024-25, published on 29 April 2026. The second is the Productivity Commission's Report on Government Services 2026. Nothing here is estimated.

National caseload in 2024-25

• 521,632 defendants had a criminal case finalised, up 1 per cent, or 6,172 people, on the previous year.
• 750,028 criminal matters and 404,652 civil matters were lodged across the Supreme, District, County, Magistrates and Children's Courts.
• 725,538 criminal and 399,280 civil matters were finalised over the same period.
• The national clearance rate was 97.6 per cent. Criminal sat at 96.7 per cent and civil at 98.7 per cent.
• The median case duration was 9 weeks. The median defendant age was 35.4 years, up from 29.0 years in 2010-11.
• 75 per cent of defendants, or 391,115 people, were male. In the higher courts the figure rose to 87 per cent.
• 22,801 youth defendants aged 10 to 17 were finalised, down 3 per cent. Their median age was 16.3 years.
• 30,050 lodgements went to the Coroners Courts, which finalised 30,660 cases at a clearance rate of 102.0 per cent.

Caseload in the six states we cover

Together these six states accounted for 504,952 finalised defendants, or 97 per cent of the national total.

Western Australia has the highest rate of any state at 3,057 defendants per 100,000 people aged 10 and over. Victoria has the lowest at 1,514. South Australia recorded the sharpest rise, up 13 per cent, while Victoria recorded the sharpest fall, down 9 per cent.

What is actually on the list

Court lists are dominated by a small number of offence types. In 2024-25 the five most common principal offences nationally were:

• Traffic and vehicle offences, 38 per cent or 200,146 defendants.
• Assault, 14 per cent or 75,576 defendants.
• Offences against justice procedures and orders, such as breaching a violence restraining order, 10 per cent or 51,361 defendants.
• Theft, 8 per cent or 42,321 defendants.
• Drug offences, 6 per cent or 31,383 defendants. This was a 15 per cent fall and the lowest count in 15 years.

Family and domestic violence matters make up a large and growing share of the daily list. In 2024-25 there were 106,602 defendants with at least one family and domestic violence offence. Of those, 80 per cent were male and the median age was 36.1 years. A further breakdown shows 40,626 in New South Wales, 23,000 in Queensland, 17,183 in Victoria, 12,464 in Western Australia, 5,150 in South Australia and 1,871 in Tasmania.

A separate count records 59,169 defendants in court for a family and domestic violence related breach of a violence restraining order.

What happens after the hearing

• 97 per cent of adjudicated defendants, or 451,045 people, had a guilty outcome.
• 52 per cent of those found guilty, or 235,149 people, received a fine. The median amount was $500.
• 11 per cent, or 47,592 people, were sentenced to custody. The median sentence was 8 months.
• 10 per cent, or 46,972 people, received a good behaviour order with a median length of 12 months.
• Custody rates vary widely by state. Queensland sentenced 15 per cent of guilty defendants to custody with a median of 12 months. Western Australia sentenced 6 per cent with a median of 8 months.

Federal courts

• The Federal Court of Australia recorded 5,515 lodgements and 4,722 finalisations, at a clearance rate of 85.6 per cent.
• The Federal Circuit and Family Court recorded 101,511 family law lodgements and 101,520 finalisations across Divisions 1 and 2.
• Division 2 non-family law work added 11,369 lodgements and 10,030 finalisations.
• 9,158 federal defendants were finalised in state and territory criminal courts, up 5 per cent, representing 2 per cent of all defendants nationally.

Roughly 1.15 million criminal and civil matters are lodged in Australia each year. Every one generates at least one listing, and most generate several across mentions, directions, hearings and sentence. That is the volume sitting behind the daily law lists on this site.

Who uses court lists

• Solicitors and barristers confirming appearance times across several registries in one morning.
• Self-represented litigants checking their own courtroom and start time before they travel.
• Court reporters and journalists tracking matters of public interest.
• Family members and support people who need to know where to sit and when to arrive.
• Police prosecutors and duty lawyers triaging the day's callover.
• Researchers and policy analysts observing court activity and caseload patterns.

Finding your listing

1. Type the courthouse, suburb or state abbreviation into the search box at the top of this page.
2. Or open your state page and pick the courthouse from the list.
3. Check the date on the list before you read it. A stale page is the most common source of confusion.
4. Find the courtroom number and the start time. Arrive earlier than the listed time. Security queues at busy metropolitan courts can run long.
5. Confirm with the registry if anything looks wrong. Listings change after publication more often than people expect.

How CourtListAU works

CourtListAU collects daily lists published by Australian court registries and republishes them in one searchable place. Every listing traces back to a public court record.

We are independent. CourtListAU is not affiliated with, endorsed by or funded by any court, registry, tribunal or government body. We hold no case files and we cannot amend a listing.

We mask individual names in part. Open justice requires court business to be visible. It does not require a permanent, name-indexed archive of every person who has appeared. We publish enough to identify a listing and no more.

We store no personal data. There are no accounts, no saved searches and no search history.

We are also clear about our limits. Registries change listings after publication. Suppression and non-publication orders apply to some matters and those listings do not appear. Children's Court identifying details are restricted by law. Nothing on this site is legal advice, and nothing on this site replaces confirmation from the registry that is hearing your matter.