Goldsmith PaulFAMILY COURT (FAMILY COURT ASSOCIATES) LEGISLATION BILLSecond ReadingDebate resumed from 9 March.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's my pleasure to speak on this legislation the Family Court (Family Court Associates) Legislation Bill. I just acknowledge that the National Party supports this legislation which is designed to improve outcomes for people participating in Family Court proceedings—particularly children—by creating the new role of the Family Court Associate who will be empowered to take on some of the Family Court judges' workload in order to try and reduce delays. So this particular role as a recognised judicial officer will have the additional powers above that of a registrar but less than a Family Court judge but will be able to take on some of the duties currently undertaken by judges including some of the decisions in the early stage of proceedings.Now if we were to step back and think about the justice sector generally in the country what are the real challenges that we face? Where should the Government be prioritising its efforts? I would suggest in three areas: one the growth in violent crime and how we're going to deal with that; secondly real issues around youth crime and the ram raids and the sense of imperviousness in that space; and the third area is definitely in this broad area of access to justice and the slow court processes and the delays in the court processes which are putting people's lives on hold for a long time. And we've been frankly a bit critical of the Government's priorities in justice—generally not being focused on the big issues. This bill does in a small way address that third area around the delays in the court processes that are putting people's lives on hold and dragging things out. And I think all MPs will be aware of many stories from many constituents and local people who have horror stories about the delays and the slowness and the cost and the aggravation and the general dysfunction frankly on elements of the Family Court as well as many other court processes which in the hands of a determined party on either side can be dragged out a very long time. Now as we've seen in this House the House has come together on many occasions to try and streamline processes and improve it and sometimes that hasn't worked as well as we would have hoped because it's a very complex area dealing with human behaviour which is not always frankly rational or seeing straight. It's times of great emotion so it's a very delicate and difficult area. So this is I suppose a modest step in the sense of saying Well what's one bottleneck in the system?" Well one of the bottlenecks in the system is the time of judges and there are a whole lot of stages along the way through the process of cases not all of which need a full Family Court judge. Are there some tasks that we can pass on to another category I suppose of judicial officers? That's where the Family Court Associate comes in. Time will tell whether this is a more successful intervention than some of the others but we fundamentally think it is worth a go. The select committee process was interesting. We heard quite a few submissions from a number of groups generally supportive but not entirely so. There have been some changes that have been made such as giving these Family Court Associates the ability to direct a registrar to appoint a lawyer for example to allow them to convene a settlement conference and to direct a registrar to convene one and to reduce the powers to declare paternity to cases where paternity is undefended only—various tweaks that were made during the process which may or may not help. And I hope they will. So look the main point I would make is when you're looking at the big challenges that we face in justice there's no doubt that the slowness of the court proceedings and the time delays to getting an outcome is a massive challenge. The Family Court is one example. Everywhere you look unfortunately—whether it goes through to the tribunals whether it's to the employment tribunal as well as the criminal as well as civil cases in terms of commercial cases—people's lives are on hold waiting for outcomes. And so the Government should be focused on this area. I wish they were more focused on this area in the broader justice space. I mean there's a lot of workshops and a lot of committees and a lot of programmes under way to try and do it but workshops and committees and plans are all well and good but it's the outcomes that we want to see and at the moment the delays are still unsatisfactory. But this legislation will make some difference. In so far as it does we support it and will be looking forward to the next stage the committee of the whole House. In the meantime I think that is all I need to say on the topic. Thank you Madam Speaker."