Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I am going to give this another go, because I just cannot give up on this one. I think we need to put in a definition of ‘meaningful relationship’, because to expect a child to be able to express a meaningful relationship where that child has been subject to abuse or violence is too much. I think that we need to give some guidance to the court about what this parliament was thinking about when it was thinking about meaningful relationships. As I have already articulated, quite a bit of this bill seems to be focused on the parents’ desires and rights rather than those of the child. Some of the things I have heard tonight, like Senator Stott Despoja’s comments express, deeply concern me because, if you think that a child can form a meaningful relationship with an abusive parent where they have been subject to abuse and family violence, it is a very strange definition of a meaningful relationship and it points out even more clearly to me that we need a definition that goes some way towards defining for the courts what this parliament thought a meaningful relationship means. That is why I am having another go and support the Democrats’ amendment to try to get some meaning around this definition.