Little Andrew: Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Little Andrew: Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 04 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7043. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ANDREW LITTLE (Labour) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to stand and take a call on the Family Court Proceedings Reform Bill. The thing is this: family law is as we know one of the most difficult areas of legal practice. It is not like a commercial dispute where the parties might have some money or an asset at stake. It is not like an employment dispute where somebody’s feelings might be hurt or their dignity might be attacked but they can be assuaged through reinstatement or through a compensatory payment. Family disputes go to the heart of who we are and when family disputes erupt people have a huge emotional interest at stake and they have offspring to consider often a family home and memories and all those things that go with it. These are very difficult disputes. So we need to have in place an institution a Family Court and family institutions that will help parties of all types to get through their disputes. 
It is interesting to read the regulatory impact statement—its analysis of the figures. It says that about 39 percent of the Family Court’s time at the moment is taken up with parental disputes—that would be about right—and that because they do not have accurate figures on how many disputes actually are fractious difficult and disputatious they extrapolate from the English experience and say that about 10 percent of family disputes go to court and about 12 percent of those go on to a hearing. That is what we are talking about. So all this nonsense about how we will just let the parties sort it out themselves—the parties who are capable of sorting out their disputes themselves are already doing so and they do not need to be patronised any further by an uncaring unknowing Government that does not know what it is doing and has brought this ill-thought law to Parliament because it actually does not know what is going on. 
We do not need to be patronised either. But what we do need to make sure if this Government is genuinely concerned about the children whose interests and livelihoods are at stake is that they have a means to get their interests properly and independently advocated and that they have an institution that will nurse parents who will be experiencing all sorts of levels of difficulty through a very difficult period. It will require professional reports and advice and they will require their own advocates. Some will be difficult and some will be accommodating and we need a system that can deal with all shapes and manner of those disputes. 
So the reason why we are opposed to this legislation is that this is nothing other than a cost-saving device. This idea that fractious families will go off and sort it out themselves with the benefit of a mediator without professional advice and professional reports is just cloud-cuckoo-land stuff and it will do more damage to young people to children and it will do more damage to the litigants. It is just something that we should not and cannot tolerate if we are serious about the State playing its useful and constructive role and representing the public interest in family breakdown. 
 If any political party should know about the impact and consequences of serious family breakdown I would have thought it would be the National Party because it is a party where even the party president has had to suffer the experience of the Family Court and family breakdown. The idea that it will now be assisting families and in particular the children of families in breakdown with a $1000 or more cost and fee is just absolute nonsense. So we are left with no option but to oppose the bill because it is not about reforming the family disputes procedures. It is about putting up barriers and it will not assist those families in breakdown in the period of significant need. 
It is presumptuous of the bill as it says that it presumes families can sort out these disputes themselves. It is presumptuous to do so. Families have to make the judgment. Individual parental parties have to make the judgment about when they need assistance and when they need advocacy and the court must be in a position to afford and to accord representation to children at this time. When they are at their most vulnerable when no one is thinking rationally when everybody is driven by emotions and a sense of loss and grievance that is when they need the most support and the Family Court system must be able to do that. So the idea of limiting access to legal advice and support is just plainly ridiculous. For those reasons we will be opposing this bill.