Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to speak on the Family Law Amendment Bill 2024. It builds on the Albanese government's landmark reforms in the Australian family law system, which were passed in 2023. Together, these important reforms demonstrate the government's ongoing commitment to ensuring that the Australian family law system is safer, more accessible and simpler to use and that it delivers justice and equity for Australian families.

Recent inquiries, including the 2019 Australian Law Reform Commission inquiry and the 2019 to 2021 Joint Select Committee on Australia's Family Law System inquiry, have highlighted ongoing challenges in the family law system, which is complex and confusing and fails to respond effectively to family violence. This bill makes a range of amendments to the Family Law Act 1975 to address recommendations from these recent family law inquiries, and it builds on the family law reforms which came into effect on 6 May this year. The Family Law Amendment Act 2023 and Family Law Amendment (Information Sharing) Act 2023 established new information-sharing arrangements to protect against family safety risks and put the best interests of children at the centre of all parenting decisions and family law matters. Where these reforms from last year focus principally on safety and clarity in parenting orders—children's issues—the key amendments in this bill are resolving property and financial aspects of relationship breakdowns. Importantly, the bill before the chamber today implements improvements in the legal frameworks underpinning property settlement and spousal maintenance matters, including specifically recognising the economic impact of family violence on the wealth and welfare of Australian families.

The bill makes this family law system safer and simpler. It talks about enhancing the operation of the children's contact services; clarifying important aspects of family law; safeguarding sensitive information in family law proceedings; including specific factors for decisions about family pets; and supporting the effective operation of the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia. Shockingly, yet unsurprisingly, family violence is present in 80 per cent of parenting matters before the family courts. This new legislation will ensure family and domestic violence can be taken into consideration in property settlements for separating families. It seeks to make division of property and finances safer, simpler and fairer.

The law builds on the government's previous reforms. The bill before the chamber will implement significant reforms. The family law system has been the subject of more than two dozen inquiries in the last decade. They have raised consistent issues, including the lack of responsiveness to family violence and overly complex and confusing legislation which is a barrier to vulnerable users attempting to access or apply the law. The research indicates that those affected by family violence struggle to achieve a fair division of property and finances after relationship breakdown and suffer long-term financial disadvantage, and certainly that has been my experience. I practised in this jurisdiction for close to 25 years and was an accredited specialist in family law from 1996, and it's been my observation that people without resources and people who don't understand the way the law applies are at significant financial disadvantage, particularly as violence can not only persist in the course of a relationship but be ongoing through the course of the negotiations, the systems and the trial itself.

The bill seeks to make division of property and finances safer and simpler. Currently, the courts have the power to make just and equitable orders in relation to marital relationships under section 79(4) and section 75(2). Section 79(4) talks about financial and non-financial contributions to property, and the subsection after that talks about contributions to the welfare of the family, including contribution as a homemaker and parent. That is mirrored, by the way, in relation to de facto relationships. We can find that in section 90SM and 90SF of the Family Law Act.

Negative contributions have always been taken into consideration in a whole range of case law in this matter. To give you a couple of illustrations of where it can be taken into consideration: if, for example, one party deliberately destroyed properly or one party deliberately gambled away assets or deliberately engaged in intentional or reckless behaviour, courts have always been a position where they can take that into consideration in terms of a dissipation or a negative contribution to the size of the matrimonial pool of assets. But we have never been able to take into consideration the economic impact or consequence to that pool of assets from domestic and family violence perpetrated by one party to the relationship on the other. That has never been the law. And so this particular legislation is landmark reform. It's absolutely crucial.

It's important that we pass legislation like this, because we want to ensure that there is justice and equity in relation to people's property settlement. You've got to take into consideration the real-life impact. The perpetrator of domestic and family violence, if they also are financially better off and have greater resource and qualifications, are often much better off in terms of the outcome of the property settlement. The victim-survivor of domestic and family violence is often a position where they are out of the workforce. They sometimes—tragically, too often—have actually been physically injured as a result of what's gone on and they cannot work or their ability to work is inhibited. These factors should be taken into consideration when it comes to property settlement. For the very first time, we are going to be doing that in terms of property settlement and spousal maintenance proceedings.

These are very important impacts in terms of property. Considering that up to 80 per cent of child related issues involve domestic and family violence. Just imagine the impact on the outcome of alterations of property settlements that are going to be made by this legislation or will be available to victim-survivors in bringing that information on affidavit before a final hearing or, indeed, an interim hearing when it comes to spousal maintenance or if it's important to protect property before the final hearing.

There are other issues that I think are really important. Disclosure is a big factor in family law matters, as is the case in a lot of civil and criminal litigation. It's important that we have disclosure obligation. One of the things that I found as a practising lawyer was that people often didn't take it seriously enough. When you've got a situation where up to 40 per cent of people in this jurisdiction are self-represented, they don't take it seriously enough more often than not. I've been in situations where people disclose massive amounts of information on the eve of final hearing. So it's important to have disclosure information not simply as a practice direction but elevated to the point of the Family Law Act so they realise they're actually breaching the act when they fail to disclose information that's critical to the outcome of property settlements. It's a fundamental issue of justice. The fundamental importance of disclosure of relevant financial information is about fair and timely resolution of property settlement. The more information that's available to people earlier, the more likely it is they'll settle the case and the less likely it is they'll go to a final hearing. It costs less money and it's better for their family, better for their children and better for the outcome and the future, so this amendment is really important. It recognises that nondisclosure can have an impact from economic or financial abuse and misuse of systems and processes. So this is a critical change that we are making. It's a sensible move. The bill will expand the court's ability to also use less adversarial approaches in all types of proceedings not just for children's matters but supporting parties to safely raise family violence risk to ensure safe conduct of proceedings.

The other thing is this. We know this too well. I've experienced it. It's quite astonishing. It used to really frustrate me from time to time. You'd get a situation where the matter was almost resolved out of court. Then I'd be in court, usually in Brisbane, negotiating a property settlement back and forth. Sometimes it took days to do it. You'd get to a point right at the end and often it was some chattels that were being argued about. You would not believe the number of times that a dog or a cat or another pet came up as part of the overall negotiation of property settlement. The love and affection Australians have for their animals, their domestic pets, and the way in which perpetrators of domestic and family violence can use the process to continue the impact of domestic and family violence on the victim-survivor I saw again and again. So the reform here allows changes that will assist to reduce that impact. The bill allows the court to consider a range of factors, including family violence, when determining the ownership of pets in settlements. This recognises recent research by the Australian Institute of Family Studies highlighting how pets are being used in coercive and controlling relationships. It's astonishing the number of people post relationships that want to continue that coercive and controlling relationship by use of not just children but pets as well.

So, in addition, the bill will provide support for safe supervision and changeover of children by establishing a framework for the future regulation of children's contact services. How important that is. Changeover is a flashpoint between parties that argue with each other over children. It's an opportunity for domestic and family violence to take place. And it's an opportunity for children to witness the ongoing domestic and family violence of their parents. So this is a critical change that we are making here. These services must operate to a very high standard by professionals and not just someone who says, 'I can do the job,' and provide essential support to vulnerable and high-risk families to safely manage contact arrangements when they can't do it on their own. Too often they will say they will change over at McDonald's or something like that and think that, somehow, being in public will prevent harsh words being used or threats being made or intimidation, harassment and the like occurring again. That sort of coercive control, harassment and threats can continue.

Importantly, the bill will provide the court with greater powers to ensure family law proceedings progress efficiently and allow divorce proceedings to be heard in the absence of parties and allow the court to not accept a parenting matter if a party has not met the required pre-filing of a family dispute resolution. I think that's important. I think that's a significant reform. I haven't got time to go through it, but I think it's a very important reform. I think that will have a significant impact on how people think about their relationships with their children and their relationships with each other.

The bill clarifies and strengthens the Commonwealth information order provisions and will allow the court to have more information available to assist in the location of a child, including by expanding categories of family members about which family violence information can be sought by a Commonwealth department or agency. So there are new powers to prevent the failure to disclose information. The changes we are making in this space are so critical.

I want to finish on this note. If you practise in this jurisdiction—and there are many lawyers who do and many people who come in contact with the system—you know how frustrating it can be. You know how difficult it is to understand practice directions in the Family Law Act in various sections. Just think about how that impacts on people's thinking and their understanding of where they are going to go and how they are going to resolve their children's issues and how they are going to resolve their property settlement. If we can make it safer, if we can make it easier to understand, if we can make sure their children are safe, if they can understand that they can survive, get the help they need, get access to professionals and get a property settlement that understands the impact of domestic and family violence on them as a victim-survivor, that will result in a better country and a better community in which those people can live.

Sometimes we debate legislation in this chamber and in the main chamber that doesn't have much impact on people's lives, but legislation like this completes the family law changes that we've been introducing, and it will make a massive impact on the lives of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Australians in the future. The ability of the court system to render justice and equity is critical to people's respect for the law, but it's also important for people's understanding about how they will get on with their lives, and their expectation of justice can be met by this legislation.

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