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

I have got concerns if, in a mediated circumstance, we are just leaving it up to the mediator to decide whether a person has been subjected to domestic abuse. I will read from a highly informative article from the Domestic Violence and Incest Resource Centre and Relationships Australia (Victoria). It stresses that in many circumstances people in mediation who have been subjected to domestic violence or abuse feel that they are scared to tell their story when their ex-partner is in the room. They have felt:

...the violence was like a shadow in the room, so I could never talk about my wishes.

The article continues:

Many went ahead with mediation to try and find resolution—

this is referring to women—

with a man of whom they were fearful, rather than out of a desire to mediate for their own outcomes—a case of the best of few options.

I wasn’t emotionally strong enough.

All women found the process of mediation extremely difficult. They felt unprepared for just how hard it was to mediate with their expartners.

Neutrality is like saying your story doesn’t exist.

The point is that in some of these circumstances it is not appropriate that they enter into mediation in the first place and be in a situation where they are in front of the mediator and the mediator is making the decision. That is the point we are trying to make here: people should not have to go into a mediated situation where they are so fearful of their ex-partners that they are not prepared to say anything, where they will just go with the flow and where they feel like their story is not being heard. The issue with mediation is that the mediator is taking a neutral position. That can actually be disempowering for people who have been subjected to domestic violence. The point here is that it is not always appropriate to deal with it that way. That is why we are trying to put this amendment that says that where there is an instance of domestic violence the person should be able to put in a statement that claims that, so they are not put in a situation where they have to be in a room with their ex-partner and the mediator in the first place.

Question negatived.