Philip Ruddock (Berowra, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I thank all of the honourable members for their contributions to this debate on the Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Bill 2005. The issues are of course of great concern. I am very aware of these matters. One of my early tasks as a member of this House was to chair a joint select committee reviewing the Family Law Act. Maybe one day—I hope I will not be blamed too much for it—I will be seen as the architect of the Child Support Scheme. Many recommendations that came from that review were accepted. We reviewed the work of the Family Law Council and other advisory bodies and came to a considered view. The government then sent our work off to be reviewed by the Family Law Council. We found in the end that we had the lowest common denominator result—whatever was acceptable to both. It had a very significant impact on me. I hope the shadow Attorney-General will observe this. I came to the view that when members of parliament focus on a very important area of policy, put the work in and come to considered conclusions the government ought to take them seriously. That is the view I came to as a result of my own experience working in the parliamentary committee system.

The development of this bill has been the product of many members on both sides of the House. The driving force behind those reforms comes, to a significant extent, from the work done by the former House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Community Affairs, whose chair was my colleague Kay Hull, the member for Riverina. I thank her very much for her contribution. She has lost none of her passion for the reforms she helped to create and I saw that in the speech she made. I also acknowledge the work of other members, including the member for Fowler, the member for Mitchell, the member for Makin, the member for Dickson, the member for Cowan, the member for Throsby, the member for Aston, the member for Chifley, the member for Franklin—I acknowledge you, Mr Deputy Speaker Quick—and the member for Blair. This bill is very much the genesis of the work done in the report Every picture tells a story.

The bill was also improved by the work of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, under the chairmanship of the member for Fisher. I acknowledge the work of members of that committee, including the member for Lowe, the member for Riverina, the member for Denison, the member for Banks, the member for Indi, the member for Gellibrand, the member for Barker, the member for Solomon, the member for Wentworth, the member for Mitchell and the member for Chifley. Both of these committees have produced largely bipartisan reports. That is very valuable when it can occur. It will not always occur, but it is valuable when it does occur.

This is an area of public policy of enormous interest and that is why we have had so many speakers on the bill in this House and in the Main Committee. I thank the government members of the family relationship centres task force for their work, including the member for Wakefield, the member for Deakin, the member for Moncrieff, the member for Bass, the member for Greenway, the member for Riverina, the member for Stirling and the member for Lindsay. I am very appreciative of the enormous work that has been undertaken.

While there has been some complaint from the opposition that the task force should have been bipartisan, I point out that at a time when the opposition has set up a bipartisan committee to oversee the implementation of reforms that involve other members—I would like to be able to count those; I do not think I would find many—there is a significant degree of interest in the implementation of this initiative, particularly in relation to family relationship centres. It was not quite the model suggested by the committee, but it picks up many of its features. The implementation is something in which government members expressed a real interest, and I thought they should be allowed to help me in the implementation task.

In relation to all of this work there have been thousands of submissions and hundreds of people have given oral evidence. I would like to thank the community for taking the time and effort to be involved in this process. I hope this will be seen as important and fundamental reform—a shift in the way people see family law issues—and I hope it will be seen to have been driven by a genuine desire to see reform in the community.

I should emphasise that this bill is part of the reform agenda. As the member for Wakefield said in this debate, we have a holistic approach to reform based upon the new family relationship centres and the expansion of other services. These reforms to the Family Law Act and the major changes to child support announced yesterday are part of that holistic approach. The child support changes, like this bill, support shared parenting. They recognise the contribution that both parents make to the care of children. There are also reforms to court processes, including a combined registry for the Family Court and the Magistrates Court.

It is not my intention to revisit every aspect of these changes. However, I think a number of the points which have been raised in this debate warrant a response. First, let me turn to the issue of family violence. The member for Gellibrand stated her opposition to the government’s reform of the definition of ‘family violence’ to introduce an element of reasonableness to the apprehension of fear or violence. She cited the fact that the government has commissioned new research on family violence as part of its Family Law Violence Strategy and as evidence that the government was acting prematurely.

The government’s intention is for this strategy to lead to an improved set of processes which will complement, not revisit or replace, the new laws. I assert very positively that the terms of the changes we are making demand that we implement them now and not wait for a further inquiry before amendments. These changes are, in the words of the member for Riverina, the product of ‘a report, a response to the report, an inquiry into the response and a response to the inquiry on the response to the report’. As noted by the colleague of the shadow Attorney-General the member for Throsby, these reforms are ‘not before time’.

The member for Gellibrand also flagged Labor’s concern that the incidence of using costs within the family law jurisdiction risks turning family law into a costs jurisdiction. I suspect that many parties before our courts at the moment would be very surprised to learn that it is not a costly jurisdiction. The question is: who should pay those costs? In cases where proceedings are the result of a party’s disregard of court orders or of false allegations of violence, the government thinks it only just that costs orders should be able to be made where appropriate against the party responsible.

We agree with the member for Gellibrand that family relationship centres are critical to the success of our reforms. The government is providing the largest ever investment in the family law system with more than $397 million over four years to give parents the support they need to do the best for their children. The quality of services provided by the centres is of utmost importance. The centres will be required to deliver high-quality, timely, safe and ethical services. Contrary to some of the statements by those opposite, the success of the centres will not be judged simply on how many clients are ‘churned’ through the system. The qualitative assessment of services will be part of the assessment process, but that does not mean you should not also make quantitative judgments. The member for Gellibrand should actually read the key performance indicators before criticising them. Objective 3 requires quality services and the key performance indicators refer to qualitative outcomes.

Some members opposite have raised concerns that the accreditation rules for staff of the centres and the complaints processes are not yet in place. The government has funded the Community Services and Health Industry Skills Council to develop a set of competency based accreditation standards that will apply to family counsellors and family dispute resolution practitioners. The council should be allowed to do that work. Its expertise should be relied upon. When you have asked such an independent body and such a respected body to do that work, it would be unreasonable and inappropriate to suggest at this stage—some months off—that they be on the public record. The skills council aims to complete this project by mid-2006, around 12 months before the commencement of the requirement for people with new parenting disputes to attend compulsory dispute resolution from July 2007 and two years before all people with parenting disputes will be required to attend compulsory dispute resolution from July 2008. With such a comprehensive process in place, the government rejects any suggestion that some sort of ad hoc accreditation rules should be introduced in haste. In the meantime, the current requirements for qualifications, training and experience for mediators set out in the Family Law Regulations of course continue to apply.

The member for Gellibrand referred to the need for a complaints process for family relationship centres. Family relationship centres will be required to have an internal complaints procedure in place, which must be prominently displayed in each of the centres. Some members opposite raised concerns that the location of family relationship centres was chosen on the basis of political benefit. As I have said before, if you want to look at how Labor did this sort of work, look at how migrant resource centres were placed.

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