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

in reply—I first thank the member for Wills and the member for Wakefield for their contributions to the Family Law (Divorce Fees Validation) Bill 2007. I thank the member for Wills for signifying the opposition’s support for this measure. That is a sensible approach. Errors of this sort described as administrative oversight involve several parties. Obviously, some in my department failed to ensure appropriate regulations were passed. Those who were collecting the fee failed to identify that they had a lawful obligation to check that the measures to ensure that they acted lawfully were put in place. I am not assigning blame but I am concerned to ensure that an irregularity of this sort does not occur again, and I have raised that with the department. I hope administrative arrangements will be put in place to ensure that such oversight does not occur on another occasion. In this bill we are retrospectively validating charges that have already been made. They were no greater than people had to pay elsewhere but there is an equivalence and it is appropriate that the validation should occur.

The member for Wakefield raised some interesting matters as to why we have a family court in Western Australia. It was unique and it reflected the desire of Western Australia to maintain an involvement, not to give up matters to the federal authority and to have a state family court. All states were entitled to have a state family court but only Western Australia took it up. One should not assume that that has given them a unitary system without other difficulties—if I can say that to the member for Wakefield. It is certainly the case that the same judges and magistrates will hear matters relevant to the issues relating to children, for instance, and, if there are family disputes, issues relating to family law. That means of course that, at that first instance stage, there may be less opportunity for the sorts of issues that the member for Wakefield adverted to that occur in other states where apprehended violence orders are obtained in a state court and issues in relation to ongoing care and management of children are dealt with in the family law system.

Of course the fact that there is a single jurisdiction at first instance does not mean that there is a single jurisdiction on appeals. At the moment you still have the situation in relation to an appeal in family law matters where they go off to the full court of the Family Court and if the issues involve a matter of state law they go off to the state Supreme Court. So there is a potential for there to be quite different appeal outcomes because of the appellate jurisdiction being in separate directions. We are trying to work through some of those issues at the moment. We have some difficulty with the Western Australians from time to time on getting a referral of power to cover the field where, I think, covering the field might mean that you avoid different decisions from a state appellate court and the full court of the Family Court.

I do not think there is any easy way forward, but I think the member for Wakefield has correctly identified the need for ministers, through the SCAG process, to look at some of these issues to ensure that the time delays and the potential costs, which he has identified, that can be imposed are worked through. I want to see a little more work done—and I might say that to my staff and officials—on the impact of the AVO system in the state courts and the extent to which they are able to be relied upon in the family courts, whether they are obtained in a timely way or not and whether there are issues we can raise with the state attorneys, perhaps in April when we meet here in Canberra.

I appreciate the opposition’s support for the measure. As always, I appreciate the thoughtful contributions from the member for Wakefield. I commend the bill to the chamber.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

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