Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Joint Select Committee on Australia's Family Law System, I present the committee's report entitled Australia’s child support scheme: third interim report, incorporating a dissenting report, and the final report, incorporating a dissenting report.

Reports made parliamentary papers in accordance with standing order 39(e).

by leave—On behalf of the Joint Select Committee on Australia's Family Law System, I'm pleased to present the following reports: the third interim report relating to Australia's child support scheme and the committee's final report. The committee was appointed by parliament in September 2019. Since that time the committee has undertaken a comprehensive two-year inquiry into the family law and child support systems. As part of this inquiry, the committee has received over 1,700 submissions and held 13 in-camera hearings and 13 public hearings. The committee has heard from many people who have had direct experience with the family law system—advocacy groups and other organisations, academics and members of the legal profession. On behalf of the committee, I thank everyone who has made a contribution.

The reports presented today follow on from the committee's first interim report presented in October 2020 and its second interim report on improvements in family law proceedings presented in March 2021. The first interim report canvassed the broad range of issues that arose in the evidence provided to the committee, touching on matters such as systemic issues, including: perceptions of bias within the system; the role of family consultants and expert witnesses; whether the adversarial nature of the family law courts could be improved; misuse of systems and processes; and professional misconduct. Secondly, it looked at legal fees and other costs in the family law system. Thirdly, it looked at delays in the Family Court. Fourthly, it looked at issues in relation to family violence and the family law system.

The second interim report detailed the committee's conclusions and recommendations in relation to the family law system, including current and proposed reforms, and suggested additional measures that the committee considered were needed to better support Australian families using the family law system. The 29 recommendations placed an emphasis on reducing delays and costs; improving the enforceability of orders; refining the family violence framework; amending the Family Law Act; alternative dispute resolution; and several other issues. I'm pleased to report to the House that the Australian government has responded quickly to a number of these recommendations—in particular, the government's addition of $100 million in funding over four years for the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia.

The committee reiterates its considered opinion that recommendations relating to the proportionality of costs and the use of arbitration are significant reforms that should be adopted by the government. The committee noted in its second interim report that it did not have sufficient time to consider several issues relating to child support that were raised in the many submissions to the committee. Given this, the parliament agreed to extend the presentation of the final report until 29 October this year and subsequently to 16 December this year to finalise its views and recommendations on the child support system and, furthermore, to conclude this inquiry.

Following extensive consideration of all the evidence, the third interim report makes 19 recommendations aimed at addressing systemic problems and improving the outcomes for children involved in the child support scheme. It is vital that the child support scheme is accessible to all. The committee recommends a greater allocation of resources to Services Australia to allow it to enhance its child support scheme services, particularly to assist those clients who have a disability and/or low levels of English proficiency.

The committee strongly believes that ongoing community engagement is an essential feature of effective government decision-making and policy development. Therefore, the committee has recommended that regular meetings of the Child Support National Stakeholder Engagement Group should be reconvened. The courts that deal with family breakdown and the concerns of children need to be well resourced. Building on the increased presence of court liaison officers, such as state police and child protection officers as recommended previously by the committee, there is a need to have also specialised liaison officers who can provide information to parents about the child support scheme. The committee therefore recommends a 12-month pilot program that co-locates child support scheme officers as court liaison officers in Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia registries.

A number of witnesses to this inquiry called for improved data collection to enhance the understanding of how the child support scheme is operating and to inform how it may be improved. The committee is supportive of this approach.

Finally, there have been several concerns raised by submitters regarding the child support formula. These are incredibly complex matters that the committee was not equipped to assess. Therefore, the committee has recommended that the Australian government convenes a ministerial task force, together with an expert working group including representatives of both custodial and non-custodial parents, to examine any of the issues raised regarding the child support scheme which the task force considers to have merit.

Turning to the final report, it notes the government actions and Family Court initiatives since March 2021 and makes further recommendations supplementary to those made in the second and third interim reports. In particular, the committee supports the extension of the Lighthouse Project and the Priority Property Pools under $500,000 Project, two important initiatives that are underway at the moment.

The committee met privately with the Chief Justice of the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia and the Chief Judge of the Family Court of Western Australia to discuss the work of the respective courts and committees, and these discussions have informed the committee's deliberations on the final report. I'd like to thank in particular Chief Justice Alstergren and Deputy Chief Justice McClelland for their assistance to the committee during the course of this two-year inquiry.

The committee would like to express its deepest gratitude to all of those who were courageous enough to provide their personal experiences by submission and the giving of testimony in hearings—many of them, as I mentioned earlier, during in camera hearings. Similarly, the committee extends its thanks to the organisations, academics, legal practitioners and community groups who provided submissions and appeared at public hearings.

Throughout this inquiry, the committee has strived to understand the deficiencies in the family law and child support systems. The committee has sought to find practical solutions that are going to make a difference to the lives of many men, women, children and extended families that use this system every day.

I thank my colleagues on the committee, including the member for Moreton, who's in the House as I speak, for their constructive and thoughtful consideration of often very complex issues. I thank members of the secretariat for their wonderful efforts in what has been at times a very trying process over the last two years. In tabling these two reports, we conclude the work of the committee, and therefore I commend these and the previous interim reports to the House.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

by leave—Just as an aside, Deputy Speaker Coulton: I congratulate you on your 14th year in parliament on Wednesday—if you make it that far!

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We'll party on Wednesday!

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make some comments, as one of the three Labor members of the Joint Select Committee on Australia's Family Law System, on the tabling of the committee's third interim report and the committee's final report. This committee was appointed by the parliament in September 2019, and thus this inquiry has been running for over two years.

I had concerns about this family law committee before it was commenced. I was concerned about the number of recommendations from other reports and inquiries already sitting and collecting dust in Attorney-General Porter's office. This Liberal majority government appointed a One Nation senator as deputy chair of the committee. I was concerned about comments by the deputy chair, made prior to the committee even hearing any evidence, that many women were lying to the Family Court, an assertion that was dispelled unanimously by this committee in our second interim report, a report that the deputy chair signed off on. I was concerned that the only motivation for the Morrison government commencing this inquiry was to kick this can of worms down the road, to do nothing but pretend otherwise.

Despite all of these concerns, I've taken my role on this committee seriously, as have my Labor colleagues and others. The committee had the privilege of hearing the very personal stories of many people who have experienced the Family Court system firsthand. The committee received valuable evidence, and I would like to thank every submitter and every person and organisation that gave evidence to this committee. It took courage for so many to revisit trauma, heartache, disappointment and worse.

The role of parliamentary committees is very important in our Westminster style democracy. It is how parliament obtains evidence about specific issues. It is how parliament informs itself. Parliamentary committees do much of the unglamorous grunt work of the executive government. It was important to hear evidence from people who are using the Family Court system. If the system is not working for them, it's not working. It was important to hear from experts in family law and family violence for their analysis of what needs to change. But the work of committees is all for naught if recommendations to parliament are ignored by the executive. This committee has made a total of 52 recommendations to improve the family law system, including the Child Support Scheme. There are some particularly good recommendations, but sadly many of these recommendations have been made in previous reports and inquiries.

The chair of the committee, the member for Menzies, told us he commenced such an inquiry when he first came into parliament, more than 30 years ago, and he's now the Father of the House. I wish to place on the record my thanks to the member for Menzies for his sterling work running this large committee. He should take up herding cats when he retires, as he definitely has honed that skill since being appointed the chair of the family law committee! I thank him for his service to the parliament on this committee and those before.

For the two years it took the committee to come up with another 52 recommendations to fix the family law system, what did the coalition government do? They didn't implement any of the multitude of recommendations they already had to improve the family law system. Instead, unbelievably, they abolished the Family Court of Australia. They abolished the internationally renowned Family Court without any recommendation to do so—none at all. Prime Minister Morrison chose to do this without any support from family law experts or those who actually work in the family law system. He didn't even wait for this inquiry, the one the coalition called for to help improve the family law system, to be completed and to hand down its final report. This will be the most shameful legacy of the Morrison government, abolishing the Family Court of Australia. Abolishing things is the coalition's only legacy; they build nothing. It turns out the 'I don't hold a hose, mate' Prime Minister didn't mind picking up a sledgehammer and swinging it when it came to a family court that was the envy of the world. It's a pity the Prime Minister wasn't as eager to make changes that would have actually made the legal system safer for families. There were plenty of sensible recommendations to choose from, many of which have been repeatedly recommended in report after report and have been recommended again by this committee.

My private member's bill is one example. It removes a dangerous presumption in the Family Law Act that has been recommended by many reports. Women's Legal Services Australia has been calling for this change as part of their Safety First in Family Law campaign—endorsed by more than 90 organisations. I introduced this private member's bill last year. It is still before this chamber, and all the Prime Minister needs to do is to bring it on, but I would put money on him doing nothing.

I first raised removing this presumption on 24 February 2020 in the parliament in response to the murder of Hannah Clarke and her young children, Aaliyah, Laianah and Trey. At this dispatch box, I called on the Morrison government to immediately act. After I spoke, the member for Petrie crossed over the floor of the parliament to tell me that my comments were unfair because the coalition government was doing something. The member for Petrie was personally insulted. So, what was the government doing? A year-and-a-half on, what have they done? They've abolished the specialist Family Court. I didn't realise that that's what the member for Petrie intended to do, otherwise I would have actually been a lot less polite than I was.

For eight years the coalition government starved the family law system of resources. They failed to replace judges as they retired, with some judges not being replaced for more than a year. Attorney-General Porter was almost holding the family law system to ransom so he could fulfil his ideological dream of abolishing the Family Court of Australia. There is simply no other explanation. And, now that the Family Court of Australia has been abolished, the Morrison government is finally giving the family law system some much needed resources such as funding for 42 new registrars to assist the judicial process and avoid delays. Imagine what a difference 42 more bodies who can hear simple matters and assist with case management will make. If only those 42 registrars had been funded eight years ago; how many more families would have avoided harm, heartache or worse? How much misery visited on children might have been avoided? How much anger and heartache could have been prevented?

As I said, there are some great recommendations to come out of this committee's report, even if many of them are not new. There is one recommendation I'd like to quickly mention. The final report contains a recommendation to expand the Lighthouse Project to all registries and all parenting, and then parenting and property, matters. Labor members strongly support this recommendation.

The Lighthouse Project is a screening program for family violence. Data from the court reported on just this weekend confirms that family violence is seriously underreported. Eighty per cent of cases involve at least one risk factor of either child abuse, family violence, drug and alcohol abuse, mental illness or threats of harm or abduction. The Lighthouse Project is an innovation of the Family Court of Australia. Development of the project was commenced by Senior Register Lisa O'Neill in 2018, and the first business case was completed in the second half of 2019. To be clear, the Lighthouse Project was not a proposal put forward by the coalition government, the One Nation political party or any other political party. Instead, it was the result of hardworking professional court staff responding to the complex needs of families coming before the courts. Labor members congratulate the court for this innovative project and thank the professional staff for their expertise in designing this important screening tool.

This inquiry was an excuse for the Morrison government to kick the can down the road, to avoid doing anything other than erode the specialisation in the family law system by abolishing the Family Court of Australia. Not to take anything from the great work of this committee and the wonderful secretariat who had to cope with difficult stories and some damaged people, instituting inquiries is not governing. It is a hallmark of the do-nothing Morrison government. Making real change to a system that is putting women and children at some risk, properly resourcing the family law system to keep families safe and making sure the people tasked with making crucial decisions about families have the skills and temperament and knowledge they need—that's what a real leader would do. That is governing. I commend these reports to the House.

Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Moreton for his kind words. I move:

That the House take note of each report.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The debate is adjourned, and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.