Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

I will make a comment in relation to the amendments that the coalition has circulated. We have circulated an amendment that leaves the current objects and principles intact. What the Labor Party has done is take these out. They're removing everything in the objects and principles except the reference to safety and the UN convention. Our amendment is to put them back into the act.

I'd just make some comments on the discussion that we've been having on the parenting framework, the objects and principles and what mum-and-dad unrepresented litigants, in particular, are now going to have to go through. The problem with the bill we have before us is that it removes, as I stated, the existing objects and principles and leaves nothing but the reference to safety and a general invitation to look at a UN convention, if you can even work out what that is. The objects clauses make clear to the court that the provisions implement Australia's obligations under international instruments and/or make clear the constitutional basis on which the parenting framework relies. What the minister has outlined in the discussion that we've had about this particular part of the act is exactly the problem. As a matter of principle, we have no issues with implementing international conventions. The issue with the approach that the Labor government has taken in relation to the bill we have before us is this. On the one hand, we have the minister saying that the amendments are for the benefit of people who make decisions about parenting in the shadow of the law. On the other hand, what they are then doing in this bill—and hence our amendment to bring those objects back into the act—is to strip away the guidance that might help those people who so desperately need it.

A parent might find it quite useful to know that, when deciding their case, a court will try to apply the principle that, 'Parents should agree about the future parenting of their children.' Instead, under the bill that we now have before us, all they have is a provision that tells them to go and look for the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. We've had evidence from the minister that it's online, so they can Google it. We also know that there are 54 articles and they don't all apply. In this case, they then need to work through the 54 articles to work out which ones are going to apply to them. If they can find the convention at all, as I said, they then have to wade through the convention to try and work out which articles are relevant. They then need to figure out whether the bill is referring to the provision which talks about the duties of the parents or the provision that deals with—and I still didn't get an answer in relation to article 17—encouraging the production and dissemination of children's books. I still have absolutely no idea what guidance I'm given in relation to that.

We're going to be faced with a situation, under this bill, where parents need to somehow translate a UN convention, which is an agreement about the obligations of nation states—if parents even know what state parties and nation states are—into guidance on parenting matters. As I said, we don't have a problem with the parliament saying through legislation that it's implementing international commitments. But look at the bill that we have in front of us. As Senator Hanson has said, this is a bill that touches so many people across Australia. It actually literally touches, to put it in plain English, mums and dads in their homes and mums and dads who are out there. It also has an impact on their kids and on critically important issues in peoples' lives, like family violence and the parenting of children.

The point throughout this part of the committee process is this. As to what this bill is now going to do—and we're only onto the objects of the act here, which is the bit that provides parents with the guidance they need going forward—Labor have created a fundamental lack of clarity on the face of the legislation. By removing the type of guidance which actually helps the average person without legal training, you create confusion, you reduce clarity and you create room for legal dispute and delay. Again, I ask the minister: Why did the government do this?