Dave Tollner (Solomon, Country Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

If there is an aspect of this job that causes me unease, and probably causes every member of this place unease, it is having to be involved with the consequences of family breakdown. It is a dreadful thing to be sitting in your office seeing a large, tattooed Territorian crying his eyes out because he has not seen his kids for 10 years. It is a dreadful thing to have to sit in your electoral office and watch a woman with three children crying her eyes out because she has not received any child support in a very long time and does not know where the next meal is coming from for the children.

When I first got into this job, I was asked by the Child Support Agency in Darwin to open one of their seminars. At the time, being very young and naive, I thought this was a good opportunity and I put a bit of time into making a nice flowery and up-beat speech about the wonderful things that the Child Support Agency were doing and whatnot. Everything seemed to go all right when I opened the meeting but, within a very short period of time, the situation broke down and people were screaming at one another across the room, and even a chair was thrown. I thought: ‘My goodness! What the hell have I got myself into here?’ It was quite an alarming experience. I think everyone would agree that this is an awfully difficult area for governments to bring themselves to be involved in and put themselves in the middle of family disputes and relationship breakdown. I am glad to see that a big effort has been made over recent years to sort out some of the problems in the system.

The Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Bill 2005 has been described by the Attorney-General as representing the most significant changes to the Family Law Act since its inception 30 years ago. It is designed, along with the family relationship centres, to avoid litigation as the means of arriving at arrangements for the parenting of children after separation. The bill also complements the foreshadowed changes to the Child Support Agency that were announced just the other day by the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs.

Considerable effort has been made to ensure that the bill, which is aimed at bringing about a cultural shift in shared parenting after separation, does protect the best interests of the child and that it does protect children and parents from violence and abuse. The Labor Party has announced proposed amendments to the bill that it hopes will be accepted to address concerns relating to family violence. I think Labor should support the bill, particularly since it aims to encourage both parents to take more responsibility for their children after a relationship breakdown. The bill proposes alternatives to the legal system, prioritises children following family breakdown and improves the legal process where children are involved.

The Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Bill 2005 makes a wide range of amendments to the Family Law Act 1975 and implements a number of recommendations in the 2003 report Every picture tells a story. I congratulate the committee on their hard work and dedication to the task of writing the report. As I said, this is a difficult area for all of us to work in. I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for members of the committee to travel around Australia and hear those stories everywhere. I listened with great interest to the member for Franklin about his experiences on that committee. I congratulate the member for Riverina on her leadership as Chairman of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs that put the report together. It is a wonderful report, and obviously it is unanimously endorsed.

The changes in this legislation will bring about a cultural shift in how family separation is managed—away from litigation and towards cooperative parenting. To set the scene, I refer to the Prime Minister’s statement on 23 June 2003. He said:

I have expressed before, and I will say it again, that one of the regrettable features of society at the present time is that far too many young boys are growing up without proper role models. They are not infrequently in the overwhelming care and custody of their mothers, which is understandable. If they do not have older brothers or uncles they closely relate to and with an overwhelming number of teachers being female in primary schools in particular many young Australian boys are at the age of 15 or 16 before they have a male role model with whom they can identify.

I do not imagine that any one legislative change or pronouncement can alter that, but I think as a national parliament because this is a national responsibility there are things we can do about it ... I will be asking the committee to investigate what other factors should be taken into account in deciding the respective time each parent should spend with their children post separation, in particular whether there should be a presumption that children will spend equal time with each parent, and if so in what circumstances such a presumption could be rebutted.

I am a member of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs that was asked to inquire into the exposure draft bill and to consider whether it implemented the measures set out in the government’s response to the report Every picture tells a story, which I just mentioned—namely, to encourage and assist parents in reaching agreement on parenting arrangements; to promote the benefit of the child by both parents having a meaningful role in their lives; to recognise the need to protect children from family violence and abuse; and to ensure that the court process is easier to navigate and less traumatic for the parties, particularly the children. The bill implements most of the recommendations that were made by the House of Representatives Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee inquiry.

I would now like to refer extensively to a paper written by Michael Green QC, who was admitted to the New South Wales Bar Association in 1975 and is the President of the Shared Parenting Council of Australia. He says:

On the face of it, such sensible proposals you’d expect would be accepted unanimously.

Michael Green suggests that the average citizen might even be compelled to congratulate a government on such family-friendly initiatives. Unfortunately, this has not been the case. One objection is that compulsory mediation may force separated parents, especially women, to negotiate with abusive former partners and to agree to parenting relationships that are not safe for them or their children. This is not true and it has never been true. No mediator or mediation agency would conduct a mediation session where family relationships are affected by violence or abuse. In such instances, mediation is always seen to be very inappropriate. The new family law provisions specifically exclude mediation in such cases. Nor do mediators permit parties to agree to unsafe parenting arrangements. While entry into mediation may be required, remaining in the mediation session is voluntary. Furthermore, the parties have access to legal advice, either during the mediation or before signing any mediated agreement.

The opposition to reform from lawyers can only be motivated by professional and financial insecurity. Over 50 per cent of couples currently sort out their own post-divorce arrangements with little or no recourse to the law. With increasing education and the realisation that such processes can be managed without paying the $300 to $500 an hour that a lawyer asks, this opposition is set to continue. In 10 years time, will there be much work left for the normal Family Court lawyer? If this legislative reform and community education is properly supported—

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