OPINION
John Stapleton
FIVE years ago the separated fathers of Australia would have died in
the ditch for John Howard.
Now they want to lynch him.
The Prime Minister took this nation to war on the flimsiest of
evidence - far flimsier than the overwhelming evidence that the Family
Court of Australia and the Child Support Agency, along with their
handmaidens in Legal Aid and Centrelink, are in urgent need of reform.
It was five years ago that John Howard announced that he was attracted
to the idea of joint custody or shared parenting and that he would
initiate an inquiry on the matter. This was a vote changing issue and
Howard won himself a new legion of fans amongst separated dads, second
families and grandparents.
Five years on, after endless multi-million dollar enquiries committee
meetings, the bureaucrats, the lawyers, the social engineers and the
liars have won the day.
The government is likely to introduce this year the new Family Law
Amendment Bill promoting so-called "joint responsibility" amongst
separated parents.
This is an idiotically vague notion that will give the lawyers a field
day and means nothing on the ground. Intact couples don't agree on
many subjects.
Joint responsibility to do what? Choose the schools, what church the
kids are going to go to?
This was the bill that was going to introduce shared parenting as the
desired outcome post separation. The Bill does nothing of the kind,
and will perpetuate the abuses now occurring in the family law and
child support arena.
A gutless Howard government should have legislated for shared care and
responsibility of children as the norm post-separation. The proposal
that equal parenting should be "considered" by the Family Court will
make no difference to its current practice whatsoever. The court will
continue to perpetuate the discredited sole-mother custody model, with
all the pain and harm it creates to parents and children alike.
In August the Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs
tabled its report entitled Exposure Draft of the Family Law Amendment
(Shared Parental Responsibility) Bill 2005.
This shameful report followed two major inquiries into family law by
the Howard government, including the House of Representatives Family
and Community Services committee, led by national party MP Kay Hull,
which produced the poorly written and poorly argued report against
joint custody known as Every Picture Tells A Story.
The nation wide positive media attention that Howard attracted for his
support of shared parenting has gone.
At the time, even that soft left bible of the chattering classes the
Sydney Morning Herald ran articles promoting the common sense idea
that children have a right to a good relationship with both their
parents. Some of the toughest women journalists in Australia wrote
opinion pieces in support of sharing the care of children after
divorce.
The nation's media had finally woken up to the disaster in their midst.
The Family Court, now one of the despised institutions in Australian
history, was begun as a supposedly progressive reform by Gough Whitlam
in the 1970s aimed at advantaging women. Draconian secrecy legislation
made the court difficult to cover for journalists. But as well, for
many years the country's media was reluctant to cover the court
because they did not want to be seen as conservative or anti-feminist.
Separated fathers groups, unfunded and politically incorrect, were
bulldozed into oblivion by the countless reports from well funded
feminist lobby groups, feminist academics and feminist bureaucrats.
The media black out has finally dissipated, with, predictably, the
government run ABC about the last bastion of media support for the
court.
All the positive coverage John Howard received when he announced his
government wanted to reform child custody in this country has gone. At
our expense, the Attorney General Philip Ruddock recently toured the
country promoting the government's proposed new 65 "Relationship
Centres", centres which will now add another layer for separating
parents before they hit the Family Court.
Attorney General of Australia Philip Ruddock recently toured Australia
peddling the bureaucratic lie that his government is implementing the
most sweeping reforms to family law in 30 years. The government is
doing nothing of the kind.
In his tour of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Darwin and Adelaide
Ruddock was confronted with furious fathers wherever he goes.
What was meant to be a triumphal tour to champion reforms to family
law turned rapidly into a fiasco.
He looked exactly like what he is: an old lawyer, poorly briefed,
defending the indefensible.
By his sneering and contemptuous attitude to separated fathers, he
made a whole new set of enemies. One father exiting the meeting at
Cranebrook, an obscure public housing enclave in far Western Sydney
where the government chose to make the announcement in order to
minimise demonstrations and objections, summed it up thus: "He was a
prick as Immigration Minister and he's a prick as Attorney General".
Excuse the language, but that's about as positive as it got.
By telling fathers that they are second class parents who do not
deserve to be granted joint custody of their children after separation
Ruddock delivered an insult not just to fathers but hundreds of
thousands of women as well, to grandparents, second partners, second
wives, siblings and everyone who cares about dads, their children and
the disaster that is being visited upon them by the extremist
anti-male anti-father bias of the current system.
The government chose to take heed of the so-called experts and
bureaucrats and ignore the voices of parents. They are now paying the
price. What was meant to be an electoral plus has simply provoked more
resentment. Media coverage has been lukewarm at best.
Make no mistake; the relationship centres the government is
establishing as a so-called first port of call after separation will
operate under the draconian secrecy provisions of the Family Law Act
and will perpetuate the same anti-father bias and the same
discrimination as the Family Court itself. No father can expect to be
treated fairly in these Relationship Centres. Those tendering for the
running of these centres, including Relationships Australia, have all
put in submissions opposing shared parenting; and have therefore
declared their bias up front. No father who wants to share the care of
their children will be given a civil ear or encouraged to do so.
In the process of touring the country Ruddock has made nonsensical
claims that the Family Court is not biased against men. It is
outrageous to make these claims in front of an audience of fathers and
their families who know it to be a nonsense; and who's own children
have been so savagely impacted by the serial bastardry of the Family
Court.
The evidence that children need and benefit from having a father in
their lives is overwhelming. As the man ultimately responsible for the
operations of the Family Court, and the man therefore ultimately
responsible for ripping hundreds of kids off their dads each week and
destroying any potential for them to have a good relationship with
their dads, Ruddock has in effect become the nation's chief child
abuser.
Numerous individuals and groups have made the point that the Family
Law Amendment Bill is a duplicitous piece of rubbish which will do the
nation's children yet more harm.
Why is a conservative government promoting a far left Marxist feminist
institution like the Family Court?
I think there are two major reasons.
The first is that lawyers back lawyers. Both Ruddock and Howard are
old lawyers who, as they have demonstrated, are prepared to put the
interests of lawyers and their mates in private practice, many of whom
have grown fat from the misery of the divorce industry, well in front
of the interests of the public.
The second is that the government cannot admit that the Family Court
is a biased and extremist organisation for fear of class actions from
hundreds of thousands of disgruntled fathers. While there have been
various attempts at such class actions, they have so far been
unsuccessful. A government admission of what is already common
knowledge, that the court is an antiquated institution perpetuating an
outdated style of feminism which portrays all fathers as oppressive
and abusive members of the patriarchy would make such class actions
far simpler.
In effect it is the same reason the government was so reluctant to
publish an official apology to indigenous Australia: money.
While the Howard government is using the rhetoric that it supports the
right of children to a good relationship with both parents, not one
kid will see their dad for one extra day as a result of the new Family
Law Reform Bill.
Not only that; the Howard government is encouraging an even further
rash of false allegations of domestic violence by including domestic
violence provisions in the Family law act. The government has pandered
to the propaganda of the taxpayer funded domestic violence industry.
It has deliberately promoted public hysteria over domestic violence
and deliberately misrepresented its prevalence. Including domestic
violence provisions in the Family Law Act will not protect children.
It simply means that the ideologically driven Family Court, which has
no rules of evidence that translate to the real world, will be ripping
kids off their dads with even further gay abandon.
The Family Court must be delighted their power over separating
families is being even further expanded.
The Howard government has arbitrarily and contemptuously dismissed the
voices of fathers and father's groups and has dismissed the
exceptionally strong arguments for joint custody or shared parenting.
The recommendations that a judge or advisers consider equal parenting,
contained in the latest committee recommendations, means nothing when
you get into the legal cesspit that is the Family Court.
There is enormous community support for shared parenting not just from
men, but from second wives, grandparents and from young women who,
used to the notion of being treated equally, cannot understand why
separated men and their children are treated so badly.
The upper classes in this country or already affecting a cultural
change in favour of shared parenting, failing to see why they should
waste time, money and angst on a pack of lawyers and why their kids
shouldn't be able to move freely between both their parents houses. It
is the people without substantial incomes, those who are more likely
to turn to welfare for support, who will be most badly affected by the
government's failures.
The Howard government has blown an historic opportunity to make the
shared care of children the norm post-separation. As such they are
visiting the ravages of the Family Court and the Child Support Agency
on whole new generations of working class fathers, their extended
families and their children.
