Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party) | Hansard source

Firstly, can I say at the outset that family conflict and separation are always heartbreaking. We all agree that children have the right to grow up in a family that's loving, stable and safe. Our paramount concern is the safety and wellbeing of children. That's why the government is taking action to improve Australia's family law system. Our commitment to making improvements to the family law system is to ensure that we help 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 delay 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. They'll reduce the backlog of matters before the family law courts and drive timely, cheaper and more consistent resolution of disputes for Australian families. It's estimated that these structural reforms have the potential, in time, to allow thousands of additional cases to be resolved each and every year.

The government will bring together the Family Court of Australia and the Federal Circuit Court of Australia, to be known as the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia. The FCFC will become, in effect, a single point of entry into the family law jurisdiction of the Federal Court system and will create a consistent pathway for Australian families in having their family law disputes dealt with in the federal courts. This government also commissioned the first comprehensive review of the family law system in 40 years. That review, released in April this year, contained 60 recommendations for the family law system. The government is carefully considering the ALRC's wide-ranging review of the family law system and is intent on ensuring the system works for Australian families, keeps them safe, and allows for efficient and timely separations.

The government's commitment to improvements to the family law system is clear from the range of significant measures it has taken to assist and protect separating families, including 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. The government is also establishing and extending family advocacy and support services, which provide duty lawyers at family law courts to provide services to families affected by family violence.

In the 2019-20 budget, an additional $7.8 million was committed over three years for dedicated men's support workers to be engaged in all locations. The dedicated men's and support workers will provide access to support services for both alleged perpetrators and male victims of family violence. There is $50 million over four years for family law property mediation as part of the Women's Economic Security Package; $11 million to improve information sharing between family law, family violence and child protection, 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; $7 million to legal aid commissions to represent affected parties; and $10.7 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 with family law disputes outside of court. These services include counselling and education programs, and were accessed by 70,000 men and 86,000 women last year. The Child Support Scheme is designed to ensure parents take responsibility for the ongoing financial care of their children in line with their financial capacity to do so. Child support assessments are generally based on the child support formula, which uses both parents' adjusted taxable income from the last relevant financial year. Overall, the child support system provides services to 1.3 million separated parents, and transfers $3.5 billion in financial support for approximately 1.1 million children.

There has already been substantial work undertaken to improve the system. The government agreed to 18 of the 25 recommendations of the House of Representatives inquiry into the child support program. Of these, 12 have been implemented to date, reflecting real improvements made to the system. These include the three priority recommendations that were addressed in the Family Assistance and Child Support Legislation Amendment (Protecting Children) Act 2018, and will assist in making around 700,000 child support cases fairer every year by: strengthening incentives to comply with court orders or to participate in dispute resolution processes about care; enabling changes in circumstances to be more easily reflected where parents have a child support agreement; allowing amended tax assessments to be used in a broader range of circumstances; and treating receiving parents with overpaid child support consistently with paying parents with debts.

Work is continuing to implement other agreed recommendations, including two recommendations which relate to services and mediation for parents to negotiate child support arrangements; a recommendation to conduct a performance audit of the scheme's legal enforcement service; and three more complex recommendations relating to the child support formula and related change-of-assessment processes. Together, these measures constitute significant changes and improvements to the scheme, and will provide ongoing improvements to children and parents.