Claire Chandler (Tasmania, Liberal Party) | Hansard source

The Morrison government is committed to keeping all Australians safe and secure. That is why the government has taken action to improve Australia's family law system to protect Australians from family and domestic violence and to significantly increase mental health funding to support our families.

The Morrison government recognises that family and relationship breakdowns can be amongst the most stressful and difficult circumstances in people's lives, for both adults and children. This government is committed to ongoing improvements to the family law system to ensure that the system helps families separate in a safe, supportive and timely way. The Morrison government has already committed to delivering structural reform of the federal family law courts to help end the unnecessary costs and delays for thousands of Australian families that arise from a split federal Family Court system. This will allow families to have their matters dealt with as efficiently as possible and under a single set of rules and procedures. These reforms will significantly improve the family law system by reducing the backlog of matters before the family law courts and driving timely, less expensive and more consistent resolution of disputes for Australian families. It is estimated that these structural reforms have the potential in time to allow thousands of additional cases to be resolved each and every year. It will create, in effect, a single point of entry into the family law jurisdiction of the Federal Court system and ensure a consistent pathway for Australian families in having their family law disputes dealt with in the federal courts.

The Morrison coalition government also commissioned the first comprehensive review of the family law system in 40 years. That review, the results of which were released in April this year, contains 60 recommendations to improve our family law system. The government is carefully considering the Australian Law Reform Commission's wide-ranging review of the family law system. We are intent on ensuring the system works for Australian families, keeps them safe and, as I've said, allows for efficient and timely separations of families.

Our commitment to improvements to the family law system is clear from the range of significant measures the government have already taken to assist and protect separating families. That includes the establishment and now extension of specialist domestic violence units and health justice partnerships, which provide legal and social support assistance to vulnerable women experiencing family violence. We have established and are extending the Family Advocacy and Support Service, which provides duty lawyers at family law courts to provide services to families affected by family violence. In the 2019-20 budget, we committed an additional $7.8 million over three years for dedicated men's support workers to be engaged in all FASS locations. The dedicated men's support workers will provide access to support services for both alleged perpetrators and male victims of family violence—and I think it's great to see us taking a gender neutral approach to this issue.

We've also committed $50 million over four years for family law property mediation as part of the Women's Economic Security Package, a package introduced by this government that I am firmly supportive of. There's $11 million to improve information sharing between the family law, family violence and child protection services, including the co-location of state and territory family safety officials in family law courts and prohibiting perpetrators of family violence from cross-examining their victims in family law proceedings. We're providing $7 million to legal aid commissions to represent affected parties as well as more than $10 million over four years for the family law courts to employ up to 17 additional qualified social workers and psychologists as family consultants.

These recent measures are on top of the $160 million per year for family law services to support people from family law disputes outside of court. These services include counselling and education programs, and it's estimated that more than 70,000 men and 86,000 women accessed these services last year. As well as this, the government provides legal assistance funding, which will increase to around $370 million per year from 2021, as part of the national Single Mechanism announced by the government in the 2019-20 budget.

As I mentioned, the Women's Economic Security Package is a really important element of how we're supporting this family law area, and we've provided $50 million over four years for family law property mediation. Providing mediation services will support families to reach agreements about their property splits between themselves, which will keep these families out of court. I think that's a really important point to make here. This measure is expected to provide an additional 31,200 couples across Australia with access to affordable property mediation each year. The government will also provide $10.3 million for legal aid commissions to run a two-year trial of lawyer-assisted mediation in each state and territory.

As I've said earlier, it's really important that we not only focus on how we can make our Family Court system easier to navigate by people seeking to use it but also aim to keep as many of these disputes out of the court system as possible. If we can help these families settle their family law disputes outside the court system, I think that is only ever seen as a good outcome for Australian families going through this difficult process.

We've also introduced a child support scheme which is designed to ensure parents take responsibility for the financial care of their children in line with their financial capacity to do so. The Child Support Scheme exists to assess and collect child support payments for the benefit of children of separated parents. Overall, this system will be providing services to 1.3 million separated parents and transfers approximately $3½ billion as of 30 June 2018 in financial support for approximately 1.1 million children. There has been substantial work undertaken to improve this system, and the government recently agreed to 18 of the 25 recommendations from the House of Representatives standing committee inquiry into the child support program. Of these recommendations, 12 have been implemented to date, and that reflects real improvements made to this system. As is always the case, we understand that there is more work to do in this area. We are continuing to implement the other recommendations out of that House of Representatives committee review.

The department delivers a range of services and programs under the Families and Children Activity, many with an early intervention and prevention focus. Left unaddressed, persistent disadvantage in childhood, as we know, has significant and long-lasting impacts on individuals, families and communities. That is why the Morrison government takes this issue so seriously. There is clear and persuasive evidence that prevention and early intervention to support positive child and family outcomes is more effective, and indeed more cost effective, than remedial responses. Services funded under the Families and Children Activity include universal and soft-entry services such as community playgroups and early childhood education programs, as well as more intensive programs such as counselling and relationship services for families at risk of breakdown and home visiting services that provide intensive parenting education and support.

The Morrison government's paramount concern is the safety and wellbeing of children. With this in mind, our priority is to support children to remain safely with their family and their community through prevention and early intervention measures. The National Framework for Protecting Australia's Children was developed with state and territory governments and the non-government sector to ensure children and young people are safe and well. The first three action plans under the national framework delivered many key achievements, including the appointment of the National Children's Commissioner, the development of the National Standards for Out-of-Home Care and the delivery of projects to improve service responses for families and promote better understanding of child wellbeing. The fourth action plan under this national framework for protecting Australia's children has a strong focus on early intervention and improved outcomes for children in out-of-home care and organisational settings.

In conclusion, all Australian governments agree that children have the right to grow up in a family that is loving, stable and safe, but we recognise that sometimes this isn't always the case, that incredibly sad things do happen to families and they are required to separate. That's why we, as a government, are focusing not only on preventing that from happening wherever we can but, in the sad instance that it does occur, ensuring that families are appropriately supported through the family law system generally and provided with services to mediate these separations outside of the court system. We are also, of course, enhancing the Family Court system and ensuring that it's easy to navigate and timely in addressing family separations. I'm certainly confident our commitment to ongoing improvements to the family law system and support for programs with a focus on early intervention and prevention will improve outcomes for our Australian children.