Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

In speaking on the Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Bill 2005 I want from the outset to set out the principles that I think are central to this debate. Central to this debate for me is that it is the responsibility of both parents, whether they are living together or apart, to provide a loving, nurturing environment for their children to grow up in—one where they are safe, they are encouraged and they learn to develop into strong adults, free from fear and knowing that they are accepted and loved. That is the responsibility of both parents, whether they are living together or apart. Too often over the course of discussions on changes to family law the debate degenerates into one of parental rights. Whilst of course in any change to family law we need to respect and consider the rights of parents, for me it has always been a secondary issue to the responsibility that parents have towards their children.

In the course of my time as a social worker, which was a long time ago now—and even now as a federal MP—I have seen many cases where this responsibility has been abrogated. I have seen children living in desperate circumstances, having to lie for drug affected parents. I have seen children, many of them deeply troubled, who hardly know their fathers, having been abandoned by them before birth. I have worked with young people who have been dumped by their mothers with grandparents or on the state, with little hope of ever having a relationship with either of their parents. I have seen children whose parents—overwhelmingly women—have been subjected to unimaginable violence by their partners, women barely able to lift their heads to look you in the eye to speak to you. I have seen children and young people so badly abused that there is little hope of them having any type of normal adulthood. I have seen grown adults behave in the most spiteful and despicable way towards each other—children manipulated, tales told. I have seen grandparents saddened by what has happened to their children and desperately wanting to continue contact with their grandchildren.

I have seen men bemused and grief stricken by the loss of their family, completely bewildered about what has happened to them. I have seen families working out new ways of being together but apart. And I have seen the extraordinary resilience of kids and the wonderful role that can be played by grandparents as peacemakers and refuge. I have seen parents desperately trying to make new lives for themselves in blended families and trying to make it work.

All sorts of circumstances come through my office—men whose wives have left them for seemingly inexplicable reasons, who have had a desperate, ongoing battle to see their children; men living in impoverished circumstances who genuinely want to do the right thing but who seem to hit brick walls at every turn. But I have also had men demanding, in the most explicit language, that their former wives are little better than streetwalkers and threatening to kill their children if they are not returned to them.

All of these circumstances are the human face of this legislation. They demonstrate most clearly that it is impossible for us to legislate for every circumstance and every human behaviour—we just cannot. The best we can do is to try and make sure the family law system has at its core the notion that children are better off where they can have a relationship with both parents; a family law system where those subjected to abuse and violence are absolutely protected and where parents are given every opportunity to work together in the best interests of their children and do not treat them as property to fight over. That is why I come to this debate with very strong views that the debate must be about parents sharing their responsibility for children, not parents having equal rights over their children.

The test for me with this legislation is: do the proposed family law changes support this? On the whole, they do, through a number of new provisions. Schedule 1 of the bill introduces the presumption of shared parental responsibility. This is based on the presumption that it is in the best interests of children for both parents to share responsibility for decisions about them, and I actively support this provision. The schedule requires joint decision making and consultation over major long-term issues, with these being defined widely, but not exclusively, as including issues regarding education, religious and cultural upbringing, the child’s health, the child’s name and changes to living arrangements that would make it significantly more difficult for the child to spend time with the parent. I am a little concerned, I have to say, about the practical application of this provision, but I am prepared, as the member for Lindsay has said, to suck it and see. The presumption of shared parental responsibility will not apply if there are reasonable grounds to believe that one of the parents has engaged in child abuse or family violence, and I want to go back to that provision later in my speech.

Shared parental responsibility is a different concept from, and separate from, residence and the amount of time children may spend living with one parent or the other. Whilst the schedule does not contain a presumption of equal time, it does require the court to consider equal parenting time when making parenting orders. Again, the court needs to take into account the best interests of the child as well as examine whether it is reasonably practicable. While some groups continue to lobby for equal parenting time, I think the balance provided by the legislation is a sensible way forward and follows the recommendations of the report Every picture tells a story.

Schedule 1 also changes the process for determining what is in the best interests of the child, including taking up Labor’s suggestion regarding parental obligation. The court will now need to consider the extent to which parents have actually fulfilled their responsibilities, including whether they have participated in making decisions about major long-term issues, spent time with their children, communicated with their children and maintained their children, and also the extent to which a parent has facilitated or hindered the other parent taking up these opportunities. I think this provision in particular makes sure that the law looks at the responsibilities that both parents have in parenting their children.

Schedule 1 also requires parents to try and resolve matters before they can get to court, through compulsory mediation and giving greater legal effect to parenting plans.

All of these measures act on the need to give parents every opportunity to come to a mutually agreed arrangement about the ongoing care of their children. It does not remove the right of parents to have a court make that decision where they are unable to reach agreement, but it does require parents, except in the cases of abuse and violence, to make every reasonable attempt. Where these attempts fail, the government needs to be more explicit that litigation is a pathway for families where there is violence or abuse, entrenched conflict or intractable disputes.

One of the areas of concern about the bill is whether it adequately protects children and their parents who are subjected to violence. I am really concerned that somehow in this debate there has been a trivialisation of family violence. The government has changed the definition of ‘family violence’ to require the victim to ‘reasonably fear for’. The concern is with the insertion of the word ‘reasonable’ and whether it will drag the court into consideration of what actions are and are not grounds to be reasonably fearful. Frankly, it is entirely subjective as to whether you feel fearful or you do not feel fearful.

I am concerned particularly about some examples quoted by the member for Lindsay where fathers, in reacting to some of the things that had happened within their families, started to act out quite violently by kicking walls and becoming quite abusive. It is not acceptable behaviour to violate property or to become abusive out in the public. Why should that be acceptable in a family relationship? It never is. I am really concerned that those sorts of comments are trivialising the experiences of many women—and it is mainly women, but not exclusively women—who experience violence in their family relationships, sometimes all the time, but particularly at times of great stress when there is a family break-up. The tone of the change is that people complaining of violence cannot really be believed. That is the most concerning part of this.

The issue is further compounded by the introduction of a cost penalty against persons who knowingly make false accusations of violence. Again I am extremely concerned that both the change in definition and the introduction of a cost penalty are clear indicators that the government seems to believe that allegations of violence, whether by women or men, are made vexatiously. Given that we know that there is serious underreporting of family violence in this country, I am worried about the signal both of these changes are sending to the victims of violence, particularly when we have spent so much time trying to get women, in particular, to report. The government, responding to Labor’s criticism, has now announced an inquiry into family violence. I hope that this inquiry looks very closely at the interactions between the provisions contained in this bill and the reporting of violence.

One of the other concerns I continue to have with the bill is the government’s roll-out of the family relationship centres, where compulsory mediation is to take place. The tender process and the decision as to where these centres were to go were dodgy, to say the least—decided by a group of Liberal backbenchers with no specific qualifications, expertise or understanding of family relationship counselling or of how communities, particularly regional and rural communities, access services. There is little information available about the accreditation of these centres. What happens if parents are unhappy with the quality of counselling? Indeed, what quality controls are there on the counselling at all?

As someone with a four-year degree in social work, I am particularly interested in what the qualifications and experience of these counsellors will be. In this day and age it appears that anyone who does a one-week counselling course is able to put out their shingle and claim to be a qualified counsellor. Given the complexity of family relationships, the probability is that counsellors will at some point in the course of counselling uncover family violence or sexual abuse. I would be concerned if people without formal university qualifications and several years experience were undertaking this compulsory mediation.

The government needs to release accreditation and quality standards for these centres. It needs to establish a complaints process and make sure it is properly resourcing these centres and evaluating their effectiveness. Nothing in this legislation or in the government’s words so far has convinced me that it knows what it is doing with these family relationship centres.

It is difficult to have a debate about changes to the family law system without also having a look at what the government is doing—or, rather, not doing—to support families. The pace and pressures of everyday life and the continued stream of bills and debt do not make things easy for struggling families. Many break-ups and family disputes occur over money. In this context it is vital that the government realise that its responsibilities to families are broader than simply this legislation.

The government likes to talk about the importance of strong families, but its policies often undermine them. If we cast our minds back to the last federal election, we will remember that the government promised with great fanfare that it would provide families with a 30 per cent rebate for out-of-pocket child-care expenses. The 30 per cent rebate was promised in September 2004. However, not one parent has seen a cent and they are not likely to until the end of the year. Even then, parents will only get part of what is owed to them. Many families are paying up to $90 a day for child care and it will not be until December 2006 that parents will get a rebate on money they spent in July 2004. Unfortunately, household bills cannot be put on hold until December 2006. The reality for many families is that they need the money now—not in two years.

The government’s neglect of families does not stop at child care. The industrial relations reforms are a perfect example of the government’s failure to provide support to struggling families. The industrial relations reforms strip Australian families of job security, a good balance of work and family, financial stability and the ability to secure a solid basis from which to raise their children. If the Howard government does not believe that this will fundamentally affect the happiness of the family household, then it is even more out of touch than I thought.

What about taxation? Perhaps if the government tried to provide genuine relief to families through tax reform, we might have some hope. But the last figures reveal that households today are paying on average an extra $10,500 in tax compared to what they paid in 1996. Typical Australian families face the second highest effective marginal tax rates in the OECD. Australia’s top marginal tax rate is rapidly becoming uncompetitive by international standards, currently ranked ninth highest in the OECD. Family income is highly dependent upon taxation issues. I hope that the recent so-called inquiry that has been launched looks at the impact of the tax system on middle- and low-income families.

Health and education are two areas that weigh heavily on the minds and purses of families. Whilst the Prime Minister does not sit around the kitchen table concerned about how he will meet his family’s medical or educational expenses, millions of Australian families do. Under the Howard government, families have seen health and education fees increase by over 40 per cent. Families, especially those whose relationships are stretched, need a government that creates the security and support that will allow them to spend the weekend with the family rather than at the workplace. They need a government that provides affordable and accessible child care so that work and family commitments can be balanced. They need a government that takes away financial pressures rather than creates them. In short, they need a government that is going to do a whole lot more to support families.

I, alongside many MPs in this place, have received lots of emails on the changes to family law. On the whole, they have been from men and, on occasion, their new partners. Many of them have told of desperate stories and I have much sympathy for their cases. Some—in the minority—were downright abusive, sexist and violent and did their cases absolutely no good at all. To those men’s groups that have lobbied so hard for changes in family law and who are disappointed that the presumption of fifty-fifty equal parenting time is not the basis of change to family law, I want to say to you: sheet the blame home to where it belongs—with the Prime Minister.

The Prime Minister falsely and, I would argue, deliberately raised the expectations of men’s rights groups as to what the outcomes of the inquiry into family law were going to be. The Prime Minister was never going to deliver on this. He deliberately dangled this bait in front of men’s groups and they swallowed it—hook, line and sinker. He effectively dog whistled to men’s groups, and if they are angry at anyone it should be at the Prime Minister for raising their expectations for something that he was never going to deliver on. So, whilst I support the intent of the bill and the second reading amendment moved by the member for Gellibrand, I also condemn the Prime Minister for falsely raising the expectations and hopes of many men who are grief-stricken by their experiences of the family law system.

In conclusion, I want to go back to where I started. For me, the core principle of this debate has to be that it is the responsibility of parents, whether living together or apart, to provide the best possible environment for their children to grow into healthy adults. The law cannot force parents to act responsibly but it can attempt to provide them with every opportunity to do so. The rest is up to them.

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