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

Can I just confirm something? We have evidence here. We have what the Attorney-General and we have the evidence which, in my humble submission, does not support the position of the Attorney-General. Just to be clear, though, I don't think anyone is disputing that the drafting at present leads to confusion. I don't think that is in any way disputed, and that reform to equal shared parental responsibility is warranted. Again, I do not think that is disputed. What we're putting on the record here is that the justification that the Attorney-General put to the Australian people does not accord with the data that I have read into the Hansard.

I just want to turn to something else that the Attorney-General told the Australian public, again when explaining the need for the reforms. He said:

The new laws are informed by the more than two dozen inquiries into the family law system over the past nine years, including the 2019 Australian Law Reform Commission inquiry and the 2021 Joint Select Committee inquiry.

If we could now go through and look at some of the reports over past years that deal with the presumption, seeing that the Attorney likes to rely on reports, the first thing to note is that, when considering equal shared parental responsibility, the Attorney conveniently excluded the reports handed down when Labor was last in power. In 2009, the Hon. Justice Richard Chisholm released the Family courts violence review. Did the Attorney take that report into account?