Ms GEORGE (12:47 PM) —As a backbencher in this parliament and one who, like many others, deals on a regular basis with constituents who seek my help in matters to do with the Child Support Agency and family breakdown, it was a terrific opportunity for me to participate in the work of this committee, despite the fact that the time constraint was quite onerous. I want to echo the comments made by the member for Makin in congratulating the chair of the committee, the member for Riverina, and all the members of the committee for their enlightened contributions conducted in a bipartisan manner. We decided from the outset that the issues we were asked to consider—that is, how we could reform the family law system to make it work better and more fairly—were too important for party politics to be intruded into. Very importantly, our starting point was that the best interests of children had to be the paramount consideration.

We were quite daunted by the short time frame. With regard to that, I want to state my thanks to the very hard working secretariat, who laboured for many hours to make sure that we were able to present the report and have it tabled by the end of the year. I also want to thank the thousands of people who either made written submissions or travelled huge distances to be with us. They often travelled hundreds of miles to make a five-minute contribution. It was at times a very emotional experience, but I feel that the average person out there in the community should feel satisfied that the committee, in the recommendations that we have proposed, has seriously considered the trials and tribulations that beset people when marriages break down and, very importantly, what happens as far as children are concerned.

As a member of the committee I was quite startled to realise the very high percentage of children, some 36 per cent, who visited their other natural parent either rarely—with `rarely' being defined as once a year or even less often—or never at all. With such a damning statistic it is no wonder that many separated parents, mostly fathers, feel excluded from their children's lives following separation.

That was one of the real issues we had to contend with: how do we make the system fairer while recognising changing work force patterns, recognising that there are many more women now in paid employment and also recognising the very positive development where there are greater numbers of fathers who want to spend more of their time with their children. We established that despite the best intentions of the parliament in 1995 with the Family Reform Act, shared parenting and shared care was in fact atypical for the overwhelming majority of separated families. It is almost as if a status quo had been established where we had what people describe as the `cookie-cutter outcome' of the 80-20 split-up where the mother, primarily, had the child or children resident with her and fathers being seen as supplementary additions to the equation. I think many of them describe themselves as the kind of Hollywood dads that appear in the child's life maybe on alternate fortnights, for part of the holidays and for very few days in between.

Despite those intentions in 1995 that we would move to a greater emphasis on shared parenting, the reality was something quite different. The committee has recommended that the system ought to operate with a rebuttable presumption of equal shared parental responsibility in post-separation decision making. By this we mean that in law there will be a requirement that parents consult with one another before making decisions about major issues relevant to the care, welfare and development of children. We envisage that this would include decisions about where children would be educated, the nature of their religious and cultural upbringing and their usual place of residence. We have in mind that this would be formalised in a parenting plan.

The committee rejected the concept that we were asked to investigate of a rebuttable presumption of fifty-fifty shared custody. While we believe that the goal for the majority of families should be to increase the amount of parenting time—hopefully to a situation, where it is feasible, of shared parenting time—we could not support forcing such an outcome or the mandating of fifty-fifty shared custody arrangements in potentially inappropriate circumstances by way of legislation. We had a weight of professional opinion that came to the committee that stability in a primary home and routine is an optimal outcome for young children in particular. We thought that the amount of time a child spent with each parent after separation should be a decision made preferably by both parents—one that was in the interests of the child and on the basis of what arrangements would work best for each family. The one-size-fits-all approach was not something we could support. However, we do acknowledge that in the current situation too many children are missing out and that this has some negative impacts, particularly for young men, and we acknowledge the debate in the community about the lack of parental role models, particularly for our boys.

I think there was quite a deal of confusion about the notion of a rebuttable presumption of joint custody; many people believed that this operated in some states in the USA. After extensive research by the committee and the secretariat, we found that that was not the case. What was operating was the notion of shared legal responsibility, a conclusion that the committee has recommended. So it was not only about looking at how we could assist a better relationship between children in separated families but also a recognition, I think, that in changing work force patterns the traditional model may no longer be one that suits a growing interest on the part of fathers, as parents, to have a greater say in the raising of their children and more involvement with them.

There was also considerable dissatisfaction with the institutional way in which the current family law process operates. Australia's system for resolving family disputes remains primarily a legal and adversarial one. Because it is adversarial, you end up producing winners and losers. At a time of heightened emotional strain between separating adults, you end up with one feeling that they are the loser in the equation, and that carries on with them in the way they view their ongoing relationship with their children: they see themselves—as they often told us in their evidence—as the losers in the system.

The other issue that concerned me about the adversarial nature of the legal system was that many of my constituents felt that justice was not done because they did not have the money to pursue cases that they felt had significant merit. And this is not only for the initial applications that go before the Family Court. We were often told of the frustration people experienced when court orders that had been determined and which were then breached required nothing short resubmitting oneself to a very lengthy and costly legal process to gain an outcome. When you have a system where people feel excluded on the basis of their capacity to pay, there is something wrong.

Beyond that, we believed, and came to the view in our recommendations, that there should be greater emphasis on mediation, and that assistance for separating adults to reach sensible and rational outcomes was a preferable way to go. You cannot legislate for good behaviour, and not everybody is going to avail themselves of the recommended increase in material and financial resources to assist in mediation, but we have to make recommendations that we believe are going to suit the majority of families rather than those in whose eyes no system is going to produce a reasonable outcome. There are people and some groups that still believe the committee has not gone far enough. It may be that in the end you cannot produce recommendations that are going to get support from everybody, but I have no doubt that our recommendations have met with wide support in mainstream Australia.

We recommend that in future there be a requirement for separating parents to formally go through mediation before they are able to make an application to a court or tribunal for a parenting order, except in cases where there is family violence, substance abuse or child abuse, including sexual abuse. Where those issues are the cause of marital breakdown, and issues relating to the welfare of children have to be resolved, they will continue to be formally dealt with through the courts. But instead of what happens now in marital breakdown, where the first point of reference is the local solicitor or the chamber magistrate, we are suggesting that there be a one-stop shop approach where government can establish agencies that can assist parents to develop a parenting plan that has the interests of the children at its centre.

We believe that a families tribunal should be established where, in the event of mediation not resolving the dispute between the separating parents, a system of conciliation and arbitration along the lines that we have had historically for resolving industrial relations disputes might be set in place to deal with family issues into the future. We believe that the vast majority of cases are capable of resolution before disputes reach lawyers and the court.

Debate (on motion by Mr Bartlett) adjourned.

Main Committee adjourned at 1.00 p.m.