Tammy Tyrrell (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Hansard source

The current family law system is broken. It's failing parents and, more importantly, it's failing kids. The Family Law Amendment Bill 2023 and the Family Law Amendment (Information Sharing) Bill 2023 will fundamentally change the way family law disputes are resolved by the courts. Children will now be at the centre of the family law system, and this is where they should be. Children aren't responsible for the actions of their parents. They're kids. They rely on their parents for food, shelter and everything in between. Children aren't the reason parents fight and break up. Children are powerless about who they live with and how long their visits can be. We owe it to people who are too young to make decisions for themselves to have their best interests front and centre when decisions are made about their future. I'm hopeful that the changes made by these bills will do just that.

The changes made by these bills are made in response to recent inquiries into the family law system, most notably by the Australian Law Reform Commission and the Joint Select Committee on Australia's Family Law System. The Family Law Amendment Bill makes a number of changes to the Family Law Act. Perhaps most importantly, it replaces the presumption of shared parental responsibility with a new paramount consideration for resolving family law disputes: the best interests of the child. I support this bill. The information sharing bill also makes changes to how information about family violence, child abuse and neglect is shared between state, territory and federal authorities and the courts. I also support this bill.

The government amendments to their own bills include statutory reviews of the changes made by both bills. These reviews were recommended by the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee, and I think this is a good move. We need statutory reviews in place to see if the bills will actually work like we want them to. If they don't, we'll know about it; the reviews will guarantee that. If there is room for improvement we can make the necessary changes to ensure the family law system is operating as intended. I'm happy to support these government amendments, and I'm happy that they come to the table and listen to my concerns. When we first saw the statutory reviews, they were open-ended. They had a start date but not an end date. The risk with the way the government amendments were originally drafted was that the Attorney-General could decide to start but never complete a review. A report could be half written and never see the light of day, or there could be a draft report with some great recommendations that the government could sit on. Politics could prevent progress, and we don't want that.

I worked with the government to come to an agreement that the three-year reviews in both bills will have a 12-month time limit. This gives the reviewer enough time to ask all the important questions of the necessary people, but it also gives the parliament an assurance that the next government must present a report about the changes made by this legislation. That means that, if needed, we can improve the family law system to make it even better for all parties.