Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Liberal government's abolition of the Family Court will hurt women and will hurt children. The Family Court was established specifically to protect the people before it, particularly children, families and the survivors of family and domestic violence. It did this by creating for the first time in this country a standalone specialist family law court working in a system of collaborative, culturally safe and co-located services.

The model that the Family Court operates under is unique and has been held up as a model of best practice internationally. But the radical and misconceived changes in the bill, even as amended, are going to effectively put an end to a specialist standalone Family Court in this country. The thing is that there's no-one in support of this bill outside of this parliament. The people who work in the sector and the people who support people who go through the Family Court all oppose this bill. They oppose it because they know that it is the end of a standalone court designed to deal with some of the most significant incidents that people will ever face in their lives. The issues that the Family Court deals with are some of the most personal and most difficult that people will ever face in their lives. Not only can they be incredibly complicated and personal but they can also deal with some of the most fundamental questions, including those that have been occupying this parliament in recent times—namely, how do we as a society ensure that children and women are protected when there is domestic and family violence? That is what the Family Court was set up for.

When the people who participate in the Family Court system and the people who use the Family Court system all say, 'Don't abolish the court,' you have to ask: why is the government proceeding with it? Well, I'll tell you whose support this might have: Senator Pauline Hanson and One Nation. So the government are quite happy to listen to One Nation when it says, 'We would like you to please abolish the Family Court,' but they won't listen to everyone else who actually now has to deal with the effect of the abolition of the Family Court.

You will find, I suspect, agreement across the parliament that there are things in the Family Court system that could be done better. But the root cause of that is not the Family Court itself. The root cause of that, in many respects, is a systemic and systematic underresourcing of the court over many, many years. The simple fact is that there are judges in the Family Court who are dealing with case loads in their hundreds. They are being forced to push people's hearings further and further back in a way that no doubt frustrates and hurts the people who are involved and who are going through that court. But that's because the government has underresourced it.

The only thing the government can point to to say that this is the fix is a desktop review that was done by some consultants, which says there are some potential efficiency savings. Well, do you know what? If you're after efficiency savings, you don't actually need legislation to do it. A lot of the changes that could be made could be dealt with by increased resourcing, and if there's a need for some restructuring you don't need legislation to do it. If you did want to restructure, you would have a serious look at the model that does have support among the community, which is the Family Court 2.0 model. There is an alternative model out there that would have the broad support of the community. But the government's not listening to people who use the Family Court. The government's not listening to women and children. The government is doing what One Nation has asked it to do.

This is a very significantly distressing day. This week of all weeks, for the government to be abolishing a court that is designed to protect women and children is reprehensible. This will change Australian society for the worse. This bill, even with the amendments, should not be supported.

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