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

no consequences, as my colleague says, to deal with it. Yet this legislation is about stripping that away. This legislation is about changing the way in which issues relating to violence that may impact upon children are seen. It is about broadening their definition, widening the range of claims that can be made and giving people many more issues which they can dispute. I have a great deal of trust in our legal system. I have met a lot of judges of the Family Court; I know they come with the very best of intentions to work these things through. We have a magistracy that has been playing that positive role. I do not believe any court would have come to a view whereby they would not have taken into account these issues properly before them, that are going to impact upon a child detrimentally, under the regime that was in place. My view about those matters is that we need to have very clearly in our minds the point I made that children's interests are not only in being safe. It is a prerequisite that they should be, but to be denied some contact with your mother or your father because somebody is about wanting, essentially, to punish a person whom they have been in a loving relationship with but now feel aggrieved by is the worst possible outcome. We have seen children removed from one part of the world to another in order that the other parent has no continuing contact. We see people wanting to move great distances from where they have lived, ostensibly on the basis of being closer to other family members, which deprives a former partner of any relationship.

I know that these are difficult issues to deal with, but my view has been that the measures that we put in place got the balance right. In my judgment the changes that the government is proposing will shift that balance in a way which I regard as being most unsatisfactory. We are proposing that in relation to the broadened definition of family violence there needs to be some caution. We are concerned at the repeal of the friendly parent provisions. We are concerned at the stripping away of the courts; the capacity in terms of costs to deal with false allegations of abuse and violence is being taken away. For that reason, we will be moving amendments. There will be divisions on them and we will seek to ensure, by referring this legislation for review by a parliamentary committee, that there are not other unforeseen consequences. We do this, very deliberately, to help the government, to ensure that they do not move forward on this matter and create a problem for themselves and the nation by pursuing measures without a proper need and at a time when the measures that the Howard government implemented appear to have been achieving a very important objective.

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