Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It gives me great pleasure to speak in support of the Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Bill 2005. This is but one of three major initiatives to change how the government helps people deal with family breakdown. First, we have new community services worth $397 million, including the new network of family relationship centres, one of which will be established in my electorate in the town of Wodonga. I am pleased the Attorney-General has announced that north-east Victoria will benefit from this initiative. Second, I was pleased to see the announcement the other day by the Minister for Family and Community Services of child support reforms that improve on a system that has not worked to the advantage of children. Instead, it has mainly worked to the advantage of deceitful custodial parents. Third is the bill I am speaking on today. This bill finally moves away from the stifling language of Whitlam era social progress. It is a bill that takes seriously the myriad problems that face custodial and non-custodial parents today. In practical terms, if we elevate the notion of relationships to being the No. 1 issue in society, this will be one of the most important bills that we as parliamentarians will ever debate.

This bill is the culmination of many years of parliamentary work, reflecting the serious nature of this issue. Back in June 2003 the Prime Minister announced the House of Representatives Family and Community Services Committee inquiry, which produced the very moving and very sobering report Every picture tells a story in December 2003. An exposure draft of this legislation was considered by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, of which I am a member, which reported late last year. This bill, in combination with the other two prongs of the Australian government’s approach to family law reform, recognises some important realities that we need to keep in mind in this place.

Governments cannot legislate for the failure of marriage. Governments should not allow vindictive parents to lock one parent out of their child’s life on the grounds of a baseless allegation. Governments should, where possible, encourage cooperation, not litigation, and move away from the adversarial and litigation based spectacles that unfortunately beset many family breakdowns and settlements. Governments should ensure that the best interests of the child are at the heart of any settlement. And governments should ensure that the best interests of a child include, all things being equal, a meaningful relationship with both parents. Family law should not be couched as a male-female 1970s outdated gender equality battle. I have had numerous complaints from non-custodial fathers in my electorate who, despite their best efforts, can be locked out of their child’s life. The category I have the most complaints from is the mother of a non-custodial father or the second wife of a non-custodial father.

Despite numerous hours of bipartisan work on this bill, the member for Gellibrand moved an amendment that really does not reflect this bipartisan cooperation. It was interesting that yesterday the member for Melbourne stated that the Labor Party believes these reforms are a move in the right direction generally and that Labor supports the bills but has some concerns. The truth is that the member for Gellibrand circulated an amendment that fundamentally undermines this legislation. This amendment harks back to the failed policies that we have had to date where baseless allegations of violence can lock one parent out of a relationship, and it removes the need to attend mediation in a genuine fashion. It reflects the battle between the old leftists and feminist sisterhood and the ALP members who know the real concerns and needs of middle Australia. Labor is shamelessly positioning itself as supporting the bill while the member for Gellibrand seeks to neuter it. The Labor Party knows that these reforms will be welcomed by the community and that the community has waited for a long time for these reforms. At the end of the day the opposition lacks the courage to acknowledge the truth.

The shadow Attorney-General, whose ideological stance made her the lone dissenter on the House Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs on this topic, has bullied her more sensible colleagues into opposing this bill by the back door with an amendment that effectively kills it. Then again, what do you expect from someone fashioned in the old style of the Labor sisterhood? Someone from a very privileged, comfortable, middle-class background, who was educated at MLC, has the temerity to tell workers what they need and what they want. Then again, the member for Gellibrand is the same member who said that I did not understand anything about the multicultural community in which we live. If by ‘a multicultural community’ she means those who come from non-English-speaking backgrounds then I invite her to have a cup of tea with me and I can tell her all about it.

Back to the main points of this bill. Schedule 1 provides the central presumption of shared parental responsibility. Under this, the court will have to consider children spending equal time with both parents, but only where that is practicable. If that is not the case then the court will consider arrangements involving substantial and significant time in the day-to-day lives of children—and not just at weekends and holidays but a mix of days and nights. The courts will also need to consider which parents fail in undertakings or orders—that is, not paying child support or absence when handing over the children, as just some of the matters.

New section 68CC establishes a two-tiered approach, where at first the benefit of having a meaningful relationship with both parents is considered, along with the need to protect the child from physical and/or psychological harm. The next level is views expressed by the child and the relationship of the child with grandparents and other people. This is an important move. It does reflect the reality that we can no longer separate men and women in terms of their employment, level of income or share of parental care. The best resolution to a dispute is not one that is imposed on the parties but one they reach themselves, and this longstanding policy of the government is advanced here, where parties are encouraged to resolve their disputes in a non-adversarial manner.

Schedule 2 strengthens existing enforcement mechanisms to ensure that agreements are sustained. Schedule 3 will ensure that child related proceedings are child focused, less adversarial, less traumatic and easier for people to access. Schedule 4 ensures that dispute resolution is supported so that quality counselling and dispute resolution services are available to help settlement occur outside court. The amendment by the member for Gellibrand which removes the requirement to attend dispute resolution in a genuine fashion is indeed quite damaging to the Labor Party’s claim of support for the fundamentals of this bill.

Schedule 5 replaces ‘child representative’ with ‘independent children’s lawyer’ to represent the child’s interest. Schedule 6 protects a child from violence and provides state and territory magistrates with relevant instructions. Schedule 7 provides that no limit on property matters exists for the Federal Magistrates Court.

I welcome the debate on this bill and have been impressed by many of the contributions that members have made not only in the debate on the bill but in the preceding months, indeed years, of discussion that have led to it. I commend all those members who have made a heartfelt effort and who do care about families and about family breakdown and its impact on the communities within their electorates. I commend the bill to the House.

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