Amanda Stoker (Queensland, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister to the Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Green, there was an awful lot in that contribution. The bill will, across the board, reduce waiting times. As I have stated in earlier answers to questions, there has been some considerable and commendable work done by the Chief Justice to clear from the Cairns registry the cases that represented the oldest ones. So there's been a significant improvement demonstrated on the current numbers. So I will rely on my previous answer there.

There was earlier commentary that I'll take as a question about what I'll paraphrase as an allegation that this bill would somehow reduce specialisation; I don't think that mischaracterises your concern. The idea of a loss of specialisation is, quite frankly, false. The very same specialist Federal Circuit Court judges that are hearing family law cases today in the Federal Circuit Court—there are 40 of them, they exclusively hear family law cases and they have an average of 25 years experience apiece in family law—will continue to hear family law cases in the merged court. Interestingly, the level of expertise at present in the Family Court is actually lower, in the sense that the practitioners that have been appointed to that court are not exclusively family law practitioners. So in many ways this represents, at worst, the same level of specialisation and, at best, the opportunity for improvement.

It's worth saying too that, to the extent that there has been a concern expressed that wraparound services—particularly in relation to family violence—might be affected, that is a misconception. I referred earlier to the evidence of the CEO of the Family Court and Federal Circuit Court to the Senate committee, who made it very clear that there is no difference between the wraparound services that are provided in the Family Court and those provided in the Federal Circuit Court. Because the internal family law services are shared between the courts, they are already identical. So, again, there's no expectation that there will be a decline in wraparound services for those needing them, particularly in family violence cases, and one can expect no adverse impact on specialisation. Indeed, at this point in time, we have better specialisation in the Federal Circuit Court than we do in the Family Court.