Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The principle behind the Family Law Amendment (Family Violence and Other Measures) Bill 2017 is sound and positive, because it's intended to strengthen the power of our legal system to protect victims of family violence. As we know, overwhelmingly and tragically in Australia, the people who suffer the impacts of family violence are women.

This bill does many things. Perhaps its most significant reform is to allow relevant state and territory courts to be prescribed to have the same family law parenting jurisdiction as that held by state and territory courts of summary jurisdiction under part VII of the Family Law Act. The minister has been clear in the second reading speech about the other changes that this legislation proposes to bring about, including criminalising breaches of family law injunctions made for personal protection; removing the 21-day time limit which applies to a family law order that is revived, varied or suspended by a state or territory court when making an interim family violence order; strengthening and codifying the power of the Family Law Court to dismiss unmeritorious cases and proceedings that are frivolous, vexatious, or an abuse of process; removing the requirement that a court must explain certain matters to a child when it would not be in the child's best interest to receive the explanation; and removing misleading and unnecessary wording that suggests that conjugal rights and an obligation to perform marital services still exist in Australian law.

The Greens regard all of these as worthwhile steps, but we do want to place on the record that our legal system is groaning and bursting at the seams. There are many things that need to occur to deal with the pressure on our legal system. In the main, we need to see extra funding allocated to those parts of our legal and judicial system that are under the most pressure. We also need to make sure that, where we are providing some courts with extra responsibility, the responsibility is coupled with not only extra funding but extra training being provided to officers of the court and to community legal centres, which often provide support for people who are going through legal processes covered by this legislation.

That's why the Greens recommend that courts and legal aid services be properly resourced to adapt to the changes proposed by the bill. We made that view clear in the additional comments that we made to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee's inquiry into this legislation. We based those comments on submissions made, including by the Law Council of Australia, which expressed concern that the explanatory memorandum made no mention of training state and territory judicial officers in family law. We note and support the Law Council of Australia's argument that 'training is essential for the proper administration of justice' and that it is crucial that 'any such training must be ongoing so that state and territory judicial officers are kept up to date about changes in the law and so that any new judicial officers appointed to the state and territory local courts receive the base-level training as part of their induction'. Those quotes are taken from the law council's submission to the committee's inquiry.

We also note the Australian Human Rights Commission's submission, which cites research that indicates that many judges do not have the skills or the training to directly interact with children and young people. We think it crucial that all judicial officers, including judges, are provided with training that allows them to understand the ways that they can best interact with children and young people. It goes without saying that children and young people are often incredibly vulnerable, particularly when they become engaged with our judicial system. It is worth pointing out that this legislation deals with legal processes that are often where the rubber hits the road, in terms of our community coming into contact with our legal system, and often at times when members of the community are particularly vulnerable. It's really important that our courts are provided with not only the resources to deal with the changes proposed in this legislation but the proper training and upskilling that will allow them to provide the best possible service in the most compassionate and reasonable way for members of our community who are engaged with our judicial system.

As I said earlier, funding for family law courts is not currently at acceptable levels—neither, I might add, is funding for our legal aid system or our community centres. While changing elements of the law may well be a positive step—and, in the Australian Greens' view, there are positive steps in this legislation—doing that in and of itself may become largely redundant if the courts and the legal services are not given the human and financial resources to do their jobs. We can't as a society solve the terrible problem of family violence by only making technical amendments to the law. We have to do a lot more than that and we have to do a lot better than simply and only making these changes. While, as I've argued, additional resources, financial and human, are crucial and urgent, ultimately it is going to take significant cultural change for our country to eradicate the scourge of family violence, which, as I said at the start, overwhelmingly impacts women and, in Australia, is overwhelmingly perpetrated by men.

Parliaments can play an important role because it's in parliaments that we can change the law and make allocations of resources. But it is also from parliaments that many of our country's leaders flow. I saw our country's leaders—Prime Minister Turnbull, the Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, and the leader of the Australian Greens, Richard Di Natale—speak in a united and constructive way at an event at Parliament House last year regarding family violence. We need to make sure we keep showing the leadership that is necessary, because far too many Australian women and families are devastated and destroyed by family violence. We need to change our culture in this country, because for too long too many men in Australia have failed to understand how appalling and unacceptable their violence towards family members, overwhelmingly women, is.

We are going to need to change attitudes. We're going to need leadership. We're going to have to have some difficult conversations in our country. We're going to have to overturn many of the sexist, anti-women prejudices which still pervade our society and, as we've seen in recent times, still, unfortunately, exist in this very chamber.