UPDATED 4.17pm: Labour says the government isn't doing enough to make protection orders accessible to those who need them.

In the last two years about 350 people were denied legal aid to take out protection orders.

Labour MP Jacinda Ardern says some of them can't get legal aid because they share equity in a home with a violent partner.

"We think the minister needs to look at ways to make protection orders accessible," she says. "There are options to do that and that at least would remove that barrier."

Ardern says even when family lawyers offer cut-rate services, many people find it too costly and difficult to get a protection order.

Ardern understands hundreds of people are going without protection orders because the legal process is too difficult and expensive. They are "predominantly women in devastating situations, fearful of their lives, who are having to take into account whether or not they have the financial ability to get protection."

Anti-domestic violence advocate Jane Drumm from Safer Homes New Zealand insists people shouldn't have to pay for the right to be protected from violence.

"People should be entitled to be protected for free, they shouldn't have to pay," she says. "When they do get a protection order it should be treated very seriously by all concerned.

"In a country where we've got such a huge problem with domestic abuse it's pretty terrible that someone should have to pay for a very basic protection order."

Drumm believes successive governments have failed to make protection orders accessible.