How to write a statutory declaration

A statutory declaration is a written statement of fact which the person making it declares to be true, under legislation that makes a wilfully false declaration a criminal offence. It is the most common witnessed document in Australia, and most of what goes wrong with one goes wrong before a witness is ever involved.

This note deals with the drafting. It assumes you already know that you need a declaration rather than something else; if you are not sure, the short version is that a statement to be used as evidence in a proceeding will generally need to be an affidavit, and a declaration offered instead will be refused at the registry.

Start with the right question

Before you write a word, establish which law your declaration is made under. This is the question people skip, and it decides everything that follows: the form, who may witness it, and whether it can be witnessed by video link at all.

It is not decided by where you live. It is decided by the body requiring the declaration and the Act under which it is required.

• A declaration for a federal department or agency – Services Australia, the Australian Taxation Office, the Department of Home Affairs, a superannuation fund administering a Commonwealth scheme – is made under the Statutory Declarations Act 1959 (Cth).
• A declaration required by a state Act, a state court or tribunal, or a contract governed by state law is made under that state's legislation.
• Where the form itself is prescribed by a contract, the contract will usually say which Act the declaration is made under.

If the requirement did not come with a form and you cannot tell, ask the body that wants it. A declaration made under the wrong Act, in the wrong form, witnessed by someone outside that Act's authorised class, is a declaration you will be making twice.

The structure

A statutory declaration has four parts, and prescribed forms follow this shape whatever the jurisdiction.

1. The identification of the declarant. Your full name, your address, and your occupation. Use your legal name as it appears on your identification, not a shortened or preferred form.
2. The declaration itself. The words that make the document a statutory declaration, which are prescribed and which appear on the form. Do not rewrite them.
3. The body. Your numbered paragraphs of fact. This is the part you write.
4. The execution block. Your signature, the date and place, and beneath it the witness's signature, name, capacity and any required endorsement.

Writing the body

Six rules cover nearly everything.

1. Write in the first person

"I attended the property on 14 March." Not "the declarant attended" and not "we attended", unless the declaration is genuinely about something a group did and you are describing it as a participant.

2. One fact to a paragraph, numbered

Numbered paragraphs are not decoration. They let the reader – and, if it ever comes to it, a court – refer to a specific statement. A declaration written as three dense paragraphs of narrative is harder to rely on and harder to challenge, and the difficulty runs in both directions.

3. Chronological order

Unless there is a reason not to. A reader who has to reconstruct the sequence from a document that jumps about will make errors doing it.

4. State facts, not conclusions

"The invoice was dated 3 April and I received it on 19 May" is a fact. "The invoice was sent late" is a conclusion, and one that depends on terms you have not stated. Give the reader the facts and let the conclusion follow.

This matters more than it sounds. The persuasive force of a declaration comes from specifics. A declaration full of characterisations reads as argument, and argument in a document sworn to be true is uncomfortable to defend if any of it is contested.

5. Distinguish knowledge from belief

State as your own knowledge only what you actually know at first hand. Where you know something because you were told, say so and name the source:

I am informed by my accountant, Jane Smith, and believe that the return was lodged on 3 March 2026.

That formulation is not a legalism for its own sake. It tells the reader exactly how far your knowledge extends, which is information they need and which you are in no position to withhold.

6. Say what you do not know

If you are asked to declare something you cannot confirm, do not smooth over it. A declaration that says "I have reviewed the subcontractor ledger and all subcontractors have been paid, save that a retention of $14,200 is held in respect of X" is a useful document. One that says everyone has been paid, when a sum is in dispute, is a false declaration.

What not to put in

Avoid	Why
Legal argument	A declaration is evidence of facts. Argument belongs in submissions, and its presence weakens the document
Opinion, unless you are qualified and it is relevant	You are declaring facts within your knowledge, not offering a view
Unattributed hearsay	Permissible only where identified as information and belief, with the source named
Material you have not read	Do not declare the contents of a document you have not actually looked at
Anything you are not certain of	The offence is wilful falsity, but a declaration you cannot stand behind is not worth making

Annexures

Where you refer to a document, attach it and identify it clearly: "Annexed and marked 'A' is a copy of the invoice dated 3 April 2026." Number the pages of the declaration and its annexures continuously, so that a page cannot go missing without it being obvious.

Refer to each annexure in the body at the point it becomes relevant. A bundle of attachments with no cross-reference makes the reader do work that is properly yours.

Commonwealth declarations: three ways to make one

The Commonwealth position changed with the Statutory Declarations Amendment Act 2023 (Cth), and there are now three equally valid ways to execute a Commonwealth statutory declaration.

1. Traditional paper. Wet-ink signature, witnessed in person by a prescribed person.
2. Electronic. An electronic signature, witnessed over an audio-visual link by a prescribed person.
3. Digital. Made end to end online through an approved platform, using the Australian Government's Digital ID to verify the declarant's identity, with no witness at all. myGov is at present the only approved platform.

The digital pathway is genuinely useful and, where it fits, it is free. It does not fit every case: it is available only for Commonwealth declarations, it requires a sufficiently verified Digital ID, and a receiving body that has asked for a particular form may not accept it. Where it does fit, use it.

The video-link pathway is the one that matters where you need a Commonwealth declaration on a form you have been given, or where you cannot complete the digital process. Section 9 of the Statutory Declarations Act 1959 (Cth) contains no geographic limitation, so it is available to a declarant anywhere, including in Western Australia and Tasmania.

Who may witness it

The authorised class is set by the Act the declaration is made under, and the classes are not uniform.

Law	Who may witness
Commonwealth	A prescribed person — legal practitioners, seventeen licensed occupations and some forty other categories of person listed in the Statutory Declarations Regulations 2023 (Cth), including pharmacists, accountants, police officers and bank officers with five years' service
New South Wales	An authorised witness, a class including Australian legal practitioners and justices of the peace
Queensland	A justice of the peace, commissioner for declarations, notary public, lawyer, or a conveyancer or other person authorised to administer an oath

Two things follow. An Australian legal practitioner is within the authorised class in every Australian jurisdiction, which removes any question about eligibility. And the witness should be independent of the declaration: a person with an interest in the matter the declaration supports is a poor choice whether or not they are within the class.

Before you sign

Read it again, slowly, as though somebody else had written it and you were being asked to adopt it. That is, in substance, what you are doing.

Then sign it in front of the witness — not before. The witness attests to having observed the signing, and a document signed in advance and brought along to be witnessed has not been executed in the manner the Act requires.

This note is general information about how statutory declarations are made. It is not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for advice on your own circumstances or on what the body requiring your declaration will accept.