Chris Ellison (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Hansard source

The government opposes Democrat amendment (2), moved by Senator Stott Despoja, the Greens identical amendment and foreshadowed Democrat amendments (17), (22) and (23), which deal with discrete areas but which are nonetheless related to the question of equal shared parental responsibility. Firstly, on that presumption of equal shared parental responsibility, the government is saying here that the risk with joint parental responsibility is that you could have a situation where there is joint parental responsibility but where the non-resident parent only has a token role and it is viewed as such by the resident parent—that is, the joint parental responsibility does not have the effect of involving the non-resident parent as much as an equal shared parental responsibility might.

In the Democrat amendments (17) and (23), the Democrats are seeking to remove that presumption and, again, the government opposes this. It has taken on board the recommendation of the Every picture tells a story report from the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Community Affairs, which took over 2,000 submissions over a lengthy period of time and heard from hundreds of witnesses. The government is saying that there has been a sound recommendation from that committee in this regard. It is not one which demands equal time, however. I can just clarify that issue. The government does not presume that an equal time arrangement is necessarily in the best interests of the child. Certainly, that is what was considered by the committee at length. In the Every picture tells a story report the committee concluded:

... the goal for the majority of families should be one of equality of care and responsibility along with substantially shared parenting time.

That does not equate to equal time. It can involve substantial periods of shared parenting time but not necessarily in the proportion of fifty-fifty. The government would of course make an exception where there is an example of abuse of children, violence between the parties or a history or violence; that obviously can involve an exception.

We would say that there is or should be a presumption of equal shared parental responsibility, which relates to shared decision making and shared responsibility for the children. The court will only have to consider an equal time arrangement where there is equal shared parental responsibility. I have seen cases of joint custody in the old days where the resident parent saw that as really being total custody and it was just a token effort on the part of the non-resident parent. Every child, subject to the exceptions I have mentioned, does benefit from having as much contact with their mum and dad as they possibly can, and that is what we are talking about.