Nicola Roxon (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

Labor is happy to support the amendments that the government has flagged. The Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Bill 2006 has had a long and torrid life, going through both this House and the other place as well as having two committees look into it. I do not intend to go through in any detail the issues that have previously been raised in this House, other than to flag that we are grateful that the government has picked up a number of amendments that have been recommended by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, by the Labor Party as the opposition and by the Senate Legal and Constitutional Legislation Committee.

There are a number of recommendations that have not been picked up. I note that the government has been happy to pick and choose when it is interested in listening to recommendations from the committees and when it is not. I think it is unfortunate that a number of other issues that have been flagged here before have not been picked up—those dealing with the definition of violence, the cooling off period, the use of ‘equal’ or ‘joint’ in the legislation and the issues that the Senate committee picked up in respect of false allegations and costs.

However, we welcome this broad package. It has been a long time coming. We hold the same hopes that the government holds that this will provide some long-term relief to families who are going through family breakdown. We hope that the family relationship centres program will be as successful as the government maintains. We will certainly be doing our part to make sure that these changes will provide significant relief for families. We will continue to keep an eye on the issues that we think may have some negative impact. No doubt we will be back in this place debating matters further if our fears are held up. We hope that is not the case and we are happy to support the amendments that have been moved in the House today.

See this speech in context