Collins Judith: Care of Children Bill — Instruction to Committee Procedure In Committee 
Collins Judith: Care of Children Bill — Instruction to Committee Procedure In Committee 
[Volume:621;Page:16628] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 Thank you for the opportunity to speak on Part 1 of the Care of Children Bill. Some clauses in Part 1 have some merit and today I shall focus on some of the more important parts some that do not have quite as much merit and some of the reasons why the National Party is not supporting the whole of the bill although there are some parts that it will. 
Part 1 starts off with the premise that the child’s welfare and best interests are supposed to be paramount and they are. They have to be paramount. However that is already covered in existing law in the Guardianship Act. Part 1 makes some changes and states that the child’s view must be taken into account in relation to where he or she lives and those sorts of other matters. That sounds great in theory but the fact is that the child’s view is already being taken into account in the Family Court and by any parent worth his or her salt. 
Of concern is that under Part 1 children are being asked to choose between parents. That is a very very real concern for those of us with any experience in family law and there are particularly difficult issues when children are so often tugged between parents in very very difficult situations. Let us face it the Care of Children Bill is not legislation that most children in this country will ever have anything to do with. Although the Care of Children Bill is said to be about recognising families in their very many diverse forms it does not deal with families that for the most part are functioning. It deals with unusual situations where families are not functioning correctly. 
That is because families that are functioning and even families that have split up and broken apart but are still bound together by the love care and concern for the welfare of their children do sort things out without going through the process of bringing the law into the matter and wherever possible without going anywhere near the Family Court. It is not that the Family Court is an evil place or that the people in it do not do a very good job. By and large they do a good job. The fact is that parents need to keep their children out of the Family Court and they need to keep themselves out because every cent spent in the Family Court is a cent that is not spent on the child. 
This bill does not state one thing about the role of parents in sorting out their differences and keeping the Family Court out of their lives. Itprovides for counsel for the child. Counsel for the child has been around for a long time and it isa really sad day when we have to state in legislation that counsel for the child—as if it were a really new and wonderful thing—must meet the child. Most people would think that that was a pretty basic arrangement. Most people would think that any law that would allow counsel for the child to exist to be paid and supposedly represent the child and allows for a counsel for the child not to meet the child and not to take his or her views into account would be poor law. It is one that we have been paying for for a long time and it has nothing in particular to do with anything other than the fact that judges and the court system have allowed that to happen. One of the reasons for that is that the Family Court has for a long time been a very secret court. 
One of the concerns that worries us in particular in relation to Part 1 is the day-to-day care provision where day-to-day care is now to be the new politically correct term for custody. Apparently custody implies some ownership. Well parents do own their children but children own their parents and that is something we need to get through in this country. To call day-to-day care the parenting that a normal parent goes about with his or her child is an insult to parents. It reduces parental custody and parental rights responsibility to that of being a childcare worker paid by the hour. Interestingly the concept of partner of a parent gets a huge amount of status in this legislation. Of course it has nothing to do with care of children; it is all to do with parental rights over who they want to have as their partner.