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

With all due respect, the point here is that the Attorney-General has misled the public about the impact of the Howard government's reforms. They are not my assessments; they are the assessments of Professor Parkinson, based on the available data. The Attorney-General clearly stated, in his articles in the newspapers that I referred to:

… the Howard government inserted the presumption of equal shared parental responsibility in the Family Law Act. This ill-advised step has created ongoing confusion and delivered prolonged litigation and conflict.

It is time to repair the damage.

But when you actually look at the evidence in relation to what occurred after the changes were made, as I said, you see that there was actually a fall of 32 per cent over the five years following 2006. So I would ask anyone reading the Hansard to make up their mind, purely by looking at the evidence that is available, as to whether or not the Attorney-General has misled the Australian public in his pieces.

I will continue with the Attorney-General's rationale for removing the presumption against equal shared parental responsibility as he explained it. Although he was critical of the 2006 reforms for delivering, in his words, 'prolonged litigation and conflict', that, in fact, was not borne out by the evaluation of the reforms conducted by the Australian Institute of Family Studies in 2009. That research, prepared by Kaspiew and others and published in December 2009, concluded, among other things, that, while safety concerns were present for some, the Howard-era care reforms resulted in, 'better quality inter-parental relationships'. It also found:

…   …   …

So, again, you have a quote from the Attorney-General but then you have evidence. I put it to you, again, that the Attorney-General's explanation of the need for these reforms does not reflect that evidence, does it?