Jonathon Duniam (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to join my colleagues in making a brief contribution to this debate on this particular piece of legislation, the Civil Law and Justice Legislation Amendment Bill 2017. As many of my colleagues have already outlined, it does cover a great breadth of policy and legislative areas. It being an omnibus bill, that's its very nature, so a broad range of topics is covered: everything from the Acts Interpretation Act and mechanical legislation like that to the Archives Act, which I'll touch on a bit later on; the Bankruptcy Act; the Domicile Act; the Evidence Act; the Family Law Act, which I think is probably the most significant component of this legislation, at least on my reading of matters in this bill so far; the International Arbitration Act 1974; the Marriage Act; and the Sex Discrimination Act, about which I too caught part of Senator Griff's contribution to the debate. As Senator Paterson said, he made some very thoughtful contributions to the debate on that issue.

Yes, the key underpinning principle of what's to be achieved here is to streamline legislation to ensure that the laws that are passed in this place and the regulations that bind the Australian community are as streamlined and as easy to navigate as possible. Omnibus bills like this one are designed to clean up a whole range of technical and specific elements of varied and very different pieces of legislation.

As I said, the one that I took a great deal of interest in was the set of amendments relating to the Family Law Act 1975, which, as has already been explained, would strengthen our nation's response to international parental child abduction, clarify the range of persons who may discharge powers of registry managers in the Family Court et cetera. It would improve the consistency in the application of provisions for de facto and married couples, as others have already described.

Family law matters are a very sensitive area of the law. It is something that impacts on a great many Australian families, unfortunately. And parental child abduction is probably one of the worst things, up there with child sexual abuse. Other contributors to this debate have highlighted recent and prominent examples of parental abduction of children, and reading the stories of those particular cases is nothing short of distressing, I have to say.

In doing a bit of research on the issue of parental abduction of children, I did come across one report which has been referred to in the media and is by an individual by the name of Professor Marilyn Freeman. It examined the impacts on families: the parents, both the abducting parent and the parent known as the 'left-behind' parent; and, of course, the child or children who were the subject of the abduction. It goes through the causes and the paths that lead to these instances of abduction and the impacts that these sets of events have on each of those individuals.

No-one can deny that navigating the family law system in our country is a difficult thing for a number of reasons, not only because it is a difficult administrative system but because the very nature of family law matters are that they are emotionally distressing. So, you're battling with emotional issues at a time when you're trying to navigate the law courts and deal with lawyers and opposing counsel et cetera. It is a very difficult thing to do. Add in, as Senator Griff said a little earlier on, trying to navigate the systems and the laws that apply in foreign nations which aren't signatories to the conventions that relate to our rights of the child, parental abductions and how our law system here in Australia deals with it, and that makes it almost impossible. Taking into account the emotional distress and the already incredibly high level of difficulty around navigating the administrative side of our legal system when it comes to family law, not having cooperating partner nations where children have been abducted to makes it very, very difficult.

I'm sure many of us have had individuals in our communities who've shared experiences when it comes to family law matters. Thankfully, I'm pleased I've not had the misfortune of hearing the distressing stories of locals who've experienced this particular crime, but I'm sure it has happened in Tasmania. If we can go some way to addressing the difficulties that these people face by amending laws, making it slightly easier for the system to operate and for these people to get the outcome they need and for justice to be done, I think that is a good thing.

As I said, the whole process does cause emotional distress for the children, who have their whole lives ahead of them. Who knows what the impact will be? This study by Professor Freeman does go into a little about that: talking about the confusion, the self-hate and other consequences of having been the victims of this crime and how that plays out in their adult lives; the impact on the left-behind parent; and also the ramifications for the abducting parent as well. There is a huge amount of distress there and, as I said, I'm pleased to see that this bill will go—probably in a very small way—some way to alleviating some of the difficulty people encounter when dealing with the family law system.

On the Archives Act, changing topic and pace for a little bit: I am a bit of a history buff myself. I am particularly passionate about local history, and anything that we can do to preserve our historical records right across this country of ours is something that should be commended. We have one of the best collections of historical records in this country, managed so ably by the National Archives, who are doing an amazing job of digitising those collections. I think it is commendable to assist organisations like that, and other smaller organisations as well, to deal with the management of these valuable documents and associated items.

History, of course, is critical to us as a nation. It tells us our story and there are things we can learn from it, things we may have forgotten as a nation. In fact, I recall the occasion in Tasmania in recent years when a retired law librarian, the Supreme Court librarian in Hobart, Dorothy Shea, stumbled upon a 200-year-old document from pre-Federation, outlining many of the acts and laws that applied at the time when Tasmania was known as Van Diemen's Land.