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

Unfortunately we don't have time to find out what those organisations were, so I'll just put this on the record. In its submission on the exposure draft of the bill, this is what the Law Council of Australia said:

Constituent Bodies have raised concerns that a definition of 'member of the family', which is inclusive of any relevant concept of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander family or kinship, but not specified as relevant in the particular circumstances of the case (as recommended by the ALRC), could, at times, result in unintended difficulties.

But—my comment here—who really cares about them? Certainly not the government. Back to the quote:

For instance, strangers to the litigation—who may not have anything to do with the care of the subject child—could have their health or police records subpoenaed and disclosed.

These are the unintended consequences I was referring to. Back to the quote:

It is inevitable that many people will find this invasive and will object to these records being produced or inspected. This will likely increase legal need and create additional costs and delay.

In its submission on the exposure draft of the bill, this is what the Law Council of Australia said:

In addition, this broadened definition would result in an extension of the notification provisions for disclosing involvement with child protection agencies. This imposes a more onerous notification requirement on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families, which could effectively include all interactions between any member of the kinship group and child protection authorities. If this is not the intended purpose of the legislation, the Law Council recommends the inclusion of a provision clarifying that the notification requirement does not extend to certain persons within the kinship group who are not connected through the particular circumstances of the case.

So the effect of the change as introduced was to apply the notification obligation to a much wider group of people. You would have an obligation to notify the court even if the people involved were not raising the child, but you'd never need to raise it for a non-Indigenous family. I accept that your government's amendments belatedly change the definition to deal with the obligations to notify the court about family violence—I personally don't know why it took you so long—but how does your amendment deal with the risk of people being subpoenaed, as raised by the Law Council?