Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I thank all members for their contributions to the debate on this very important bill. The Family Law Amendment (Family Violence and Cross-examination of Parties) Bill 2018 is designed to protect victims of family violence from the trauma of being cross-examined directly by their perpetrator in family law proceedings. The bill implements a number of expert recommendations and demonstrates the government's ongoing commitment to addressing family violence. The bill will ensure that all parties have a fair hearing, sufficient opportunity to make their case and the opportunity to test any adverse evidence presented by the other party. If a party is prevented from cross-examining the other party directly and still wishes to cross-examine the witness, this must occur through a legal representative. Legal representation may be arranged privately or through Legal Aid.

This bill ultimately will improve the justice system's ability to support vulnerable witnesses by requiring the use of protections in family law proceedings that involve allegations of family violence. The government welcomes the recommendations of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee's report. The government—and I'll note this very clearly here—agrees to the committee's recommendation that details regarding funding for the measures in the bill be announced prior to debate in the Senate. Given this, the government welcomes the recommendation of the committee that the bill be passed. The government continues to work very closely with National Legal Aid to determine the ongoing impacts of the measures.

I might note with respect to the Labor amendments that the funding quantum that will eventually arise must necessarily be informed by the best and most accurate assessment of both the likely number of cases that will occur in future of the type of conduct that will be made procedurally impossible by this bill and the resourcing implications inside Legal Aid of providing appropriate representation to litigants reasonably expected to be affected; and, further, determining, for the purposes of distributing future increases in Legal Aid funding, the location of those litigants, which, as has been noted by the member for Indi, may be skewed to regional areas. So determining these impacts is not an uncomplicated process, but it is proceeding very well with Legal Aid, and once these impacts have been established and agreed upon the details of the supports accompanying the bill will be announced. Pursuant to that, I can confirm that the government will ensure adequate funding is provided to Legal Aid for representation of those affected by the bill, and those announcements will be made, according to the committee's recommendation, before this matter is debated in the Senate.

Given both this undertaking and the fact that the government has agreed to the recommendations of the Senate committee inquiry into this bill, I consider that the opposition amendment, were it to be successful, would have no other effect than to delay protection to vulnerable victims. That is why it is opposed by the government and why there is still an opportunity to withdraw it given the undertakings contained in this speech. I thank the members of this House for their contribution and I commend the bill to the House.

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