Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I'm please to follow the member for Warringah, who has practised in this area and has very eloquently laid out not only the stresses on the family court system but the problems with this bill. Ultimately, what we should start from is what is going to protect children and families best, and the strongest protection for children, for families and for survivors of family and domestic violence is to maintain and strengthen a standalone specialist family law court involving a holistic specialist system of collaborative, culturally safe, co-located services and resources. This was the intention when the Family Court was created. The Family Court model is unique and, as we have heard from previous speakers, has been held up as a model of best practice internationally. Others look to the family court system that we have. Since being established some 45 years ago, by the Whitlam government, the Family Court of Australia has operated as the standalone specialist court.

But the radical and misconceived reforms in the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia Bill 2019 and the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2019 would effectively put an end to that. Instead of working to fix the family law system, the government remains determined to restructure the Family Court and the Federal Circuit Court in a way that will make a bad situation worse for Australian families, including vulnerable children. The government's deeply flawed proposal is based on nothing more than a six-week desktop review performed by some consultants. The government's proposed abolition of the Family Court as a standalone specialist family court has been almost universally condemned, particularly by key stakeholders from NATSILS, the Law Council of Australia, the New South Wales Bar Association, women's legal services, community legal centres and advocates for the safety of women and children.

What families need now and what they look to the parliament to provide is safety, security and as much certainty as possible during the pandemic period but also beyond. At the core of so many of the issues confronted by the system is a chronic and sustained lack of proper funding and resources for the Family Court as well as the Federal Circuit Court. This failure on the government's part includes a failure to appoint and maintain sufficient and appropriately experienced judicial officers and associated staff, and insufficient funding to maintain the counselling and assessment services previously provided by the courts. As a result, there are judges who have dockets—case loads—of over 600. That is a failure on the government's part, and the Family Court itself should not be punished for the government's failures. Failing to strengthen the system has produced unacceptable delays as well as costs that directly impact on the accessibility and quality of justice.

Unlike the merger proposal, the Family Court 2.0 model that's favoured by key stakeholders proposes a straightforward lift and shift of the Federal Circuit Court's family law jurisdiction and judges into a new lower division within a standalone specialist Family Court. Family Court judges would be in division 1 of the Family Court of Australia, and Federal Circuit Court judges who are hearing family law matters would move across to division 2 of the Family Court of Australia. This model has been in force for many years in the Attorney's own state of Western Australia, and this system was also recommended by the 2008 Semple report and has been endorsed by stakeholders including the Law Council of Australia, Women's Legal Services Australia and the former Chief Justice Elizabeth Evatt AC. Unlike the governments merger proposal, the Family Court 2.0 model would have the significant advantage of promoting safety for children and adults by preserving access to services of a specialist family court. An increase in specialisation in family law and family violence law will increase the safety of children and adult victims-survivors of family violence, and this is particularly the case for groups that are disproportionately impacted in the family law and family violence systems, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander First Nations people.

The need for increased and culturally safe specialisation of courts to improve decisions and outcomes for families is supported by the evidence of the many inquiries into the family law system. The point needs to be made and stressed that there is a remarkable lack of support and friends for this bill, in large part because it's not based on the evidence. It was based on a six-week desktop review to pursue ends that one can only think are ideological ends that the government already had. As a result, almost all of the submissions to the inquiry into this bill oppose it and propose alternatives such as the Family Court 2.0 system, which integrates both a judge level and a Circuit Court component. That kind of model would produce exactly what Australians clearly expect of their legal system: a single specialist family court to address the needs of the country's families within an integrated system of collaborative, culturally safe and responsive support services.

The alarming prevalence of family violence in the system makes specialisation critical to promote safe engagement for survivors with the courts and our justice system from the time a matter is filed, through appropriate triage and active case management to expedited resolution, all the while providing culturally safe wraparound services. A specialist Family Court must not be destroyed based on a mirage that this will fix problems which, in reality, require more resources and holistic reform. So far, as I've said before, what we know is that failing to strengthen the system has produced unacceptable delays and costs that directly impact on the accessibility and quality of justice.

In June 2020, the Australian government committed to increase funding of legal assistance services as part of the National Legal Assistance Partnership, but, whilst that funding is welcome and desperately needed, it is not sufficient to meet current need or to comprehensively address two decades of significant underfunding and cumulative shortfalls in funding from numerous governments. Increased ongoing and adequate funding through the National Legal Assistance Partnership must be a priority for the Australian government to ensure that the legal assistance sector can meet the demands placed on it in times of crisis and beyond.

I say to the House that this bill should not pass, and the government should instead properly consider not only resourcing the existing Family Court but also better alternatives such as the Family Court 2.0 model that has been put forward and is preferred by stakeholders. The government should also commit to at least an additional $310 million a year in funding for legal assistance providers—as identified by the Law Council, to make up for the shortfall caused by successive cuts to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services, community legal centres, women's legal services and legal aid commissions. Substantial funding must also be made available to the social and support services that families and survivors of family and domestic violence require. Finally, and critically, the government must properly provide the required public money to allow the Family Court and the Federal Circuit Court to appoint and maintain sufficient numbers of appropriately experienced judicial officers and other staff that they may require to provide sufficient culturally safe, wraparound and responsive support for parties before the court.

In summary, this bill has no support and obtained no support during the inquiry process because it is a deeply flawed bill that cannot be fixed by amendments. The proposal underpinning it—to abolish a specialist standalone family court—is fundamentally misconceived. The answer is to properly resource the Family Court that we've got and consider the alternatives, like the Family Court 2.0 model, that have been put forward. It will be devastating for thousands and thousands of families around this country if this bill passes and if the Family Court is abolished, as this government wants to do, based on no evidence at all—nothing more than an ideological bent that is going to hurt families and children.

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