Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Bill 2006. That bill sounds innocuous, even positive. What could be better than shared parental responsibility? Women have in fact been calling for men to take on their fair share of the tasks of raising children for a very long time. Some do, to their great credit. Some would like to, but work and other commitments keep them away from the family. Others are neither good fathers nor good parents.

The Family Court has the unenviable task of trying to sort out custody arrangements when parents break up their relationship and live separately and who are unable to reach agreement. As I understand it, that represents a very small proportion of those who separate: just five per cent of cases actually go to the Family Court. These are necessarily the most difficult and most contested cases of family break-up, and the result of their deliberations almost always leaves one, sometimes more, parties deeply aggrieved at the outcome. I think we all understand that. There would not be a person in this place who has not received hundreds if not thousands of emails, mostly from men—sometimes new partners—who describe the trauma, anguish and emotional state they are in as a result of not having access to their children. I do not want to suggest that there is no understanding for those left in this position. But these are almost always families that are in crisis, and, very often, they are dealing with violence, according to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics women’s safety survey in 1996 showed that 23 per cent of women who had ever been married or in de facto relationships had experienced violence. A quarter of intimate partner homicides occur between separated, divorced or former couples. Family breakdown, according to recent New South Wales research, was a precipitating factor in almost 20 per cent of child homicides. We have all read with great alarm the dreadful cases of children becoming the victims of disputes between parents—and paying for it with their lives. So often it is a recently separated couple where this occurs.

Violence and safety worries are the key reasons many women and children end up in the Family Court. Sixty-six per cent of cases that reach the final stage of judgment contain issues of serious physical domestic violence. Children witnessing parental domestic violence are left with scars and behaviour that very often last them a lifetime. In our mental health inquiry we were told that if parents stopped acting violently in front of their children this would have huge preventive benefits to the mental health and resilience of their children. Witnessing parental violence causes a range of behavioural and emotional problems amongst children and is the strongest predictor that young people themselves will later use violence in their own intimate relationships. It is easy to understand that because parents are role models. If a child does not see a role model which includes a respectful relationship then they are more likely as adults to repeat the sort of relationship that they observed as a child. It is a cycle of abuse and failed relationships that repeats itself generation after generation. And there is no equality for the individuals, almost always women, in this cycle.

On Wednesday the Senate will vote on the terms of reference for an inquiry into sexual health and relationships education. This will be because many of us in this place believe it is important that we find out how to break those cycles of violence and that schools might be able to assist. I sometimes visit a small primary school just out of Bendigo which began an anti-bullying program some years ago. The program started when the domestic violence centre in town came to the school and said: ‘We need to stop the cycle of violence and we would like to head it off with children. We want to start by dealing with grade 3s and grade 5s. We want to experiment to see if it is possible to change the relationships which exist in that cycle that goes on for generations and to encourage and facilitate much more respectful and positive relationships for those children.’ The program has been a huge success, though we will not know that finally until those children reach true adulthood, but certainly those children behave very differently as a result of that program. There are programs of that sort in schools right around the country, and relationships are an important aspect of sexual reproductive education because they are so closely connected.

To return to the bill: with almost a quarter of women experiencing family violence at some time, it can be expected that many of them will find themselves at the Family Court in a contested case. This legislation shifts the balance away from what is in the interests of the child to give more equal weight, firstly, to the child having a so-called meaningful relationship with both the child’s parents and, secondly, to protection of the child from physical and psychological harm due to being subjected to or exposed to abuse, neglect or family violence. The views of the child, as has already been said in this debate, are given only secondary consideration. What that means is that it is less likely that evidence from a child about not wishing to spend time with one or other parent is not going to be considered and therefore child abuse is less likely to be avoided.

Another very alarming aspect of this bill is the cost penalty that can apply to so-called false allegations of domestic violence. Usually there are no witnesses to violence in the home, other than children who may or may not be able to give evidence to this effect. It will be very easy to intimidate women, to dissuade them from making accusations of domestic violence, particularly if they have very little money. It is a very frightening prospect indeed, and there is almost no doubt in my mind that women will be very shaken by that threat. I want to go to what the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission said about false allegations in their submission to the inquiry:

HREOC is well aware of the concerns of some individuals and community organisations that false allegations of family violence are regularly made. For example, in its submission to a review of legislation regarding protection orders, the Lone Fathers’ Association states that protection orders “are employed as a routine separation procedure” by women to force their husbands out of their homes, without any violence having occurred, “and/or as a vindictive retaliatory act”.

HREOC would caution against accepting this contention uncritically. There is no doubt that Family Court proceedings often are accompanied by allegations of domestic violence and the use of protection orders. However, this may reflect the fact that domestic violence often escalates when couples separate. Australian data demonstrate that women are as likely to experience violence by previous partners as by current partners and that it is the time around and after separation which is most dangerous for women.

As I have indicated, this bill is about parents’, mostly fathers’, rights to equal access to children. But equal access will not solve domestic violence situations, it will not deliver responsible parenting and it is not in the best interests of the children or, indeed, their mothers. In fact, equal shared parenting presumptions are about entitlements. I think this is an attack on single mothers, the vast majority of whom are disadvantaged in any case with the break-up of a marriage or even of a de facto relationship. It is unfair and it is not in the interests of families, children or single mothers.

Back in December last year Women’s Legal Services Australia provided members of parliament with what I think was a very useful assessment of this bill. They said:

Positive quality relationships between children and parents are not dependent on parents having equal time with children. Substantially sharing parenting time is only successful in some limited circumstances—including where parents can communicate well about their children, live close together and respect each others views about parenting issues.

From the many hundreds of messages that I have received I cannot think of a single one where I could say, ‘This man’—in some limited cases this woman—‘does not have a respectful relationship with his former partner and certainly does not reflect their views about parenting issues.’ Women’s Legal Services go on to say:

Families in rural and remote areas have less access to services and support. Women in rural and remote areas have limited access to protection.

I think we are going down a very dangerous course with this legislation. I think it is unwise, as the government has obviously done, to listen to a very vocal minority group of people; in this case, mostly groups associated with the Lone Fathers Association. I do understand their grief and I do understand the trauma of separation, but there are not necessarily answers which satisfy both parties, and children should not to be in the middle of this—being torn between one and the other. As Women’s Legal Services Australia say, it is not always appropriate for children to be transported from one household to another. In my own experience teenagers resent this—some do not, some do, depending on the relationship they already have with their parents—and for many this can be a really traumatic time.

I think that the current law should stand. I think the Family Court does an extremely good job at trying to sort out these problems and to find answers which are the most satisfactory for children. It is true that that usually means, in those five per cent of cases which come to the family courts, that mothers have the principal custody of children. That is usually my experience too, and I am sure there are plenty of submissions that pointed this out to this inquiry. It is also true that mothers are usually the ones who have had the principal responsibility for raising the child or children prior to the separation. This is a very difficult area but, in my view, this bill heads in the wrong direction and the Senate should reject it.