Smith Murray: Care of Children Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Smith Murray: Care of Children Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:621;Page:16683] 
MURRAY SMITH (United Future) 
: 
 Unlike the Opposition parties that can find nothing good about this bill and a Government that of course will not admit to any weakness in it United Future as a centre party likes to see good where it can and criticises where it knows there are failings. I refer particularly to the comment of my colleague Judy Turner about the missed opportunities in this bill. Notwithstanding those missed opportunities in terms of Part 3 I believe and United Future accepts that there are some good aspects to this bill. I want to dwell on two or three of those and perhaps if I have time on some we do not agree with. 
I look firstly at the question of openness of proceedings. There is a distinction in the Family Court as opposed to other courts and that is that the Family Court deals with situations that are quite different from the sorts of situations that come up in criminal or civil courts. The Family Court is dealing with people who are in very emotive situations and need some help to try to get the best result possible with the minimum of damage to the family relationships involved. 
I know as a lawyer—and other lawyers in the Committee will have had this experience if they have been involved in family work—that the whole area of family work is very very different from every other area of law because of the emotional loading there is. It was always difficult I found in family work to be able to really get to grips with where the truth lay. I would see clients who were on one side or the other and the amount of emotion colouring their perspective of situations was so heavy that it was very hard to sit down and analyse the truth. In a civil or criminal situation I could sit down and say: “Well tell me now exactly what the facts are here. Leave aside your own interpretations. Let me just get the solid detail so I know the factual basis and we’ll work from there.” It was almost impossible to do that in family situations because the emotions were so dominant in the parties involved. I believe that that is important and the Act is right in giving flexibility to the courts in the way they deal with things. 
In terms of the openness of proceedings United Future believes that the bill has pretty well got it right. We disagree with the view of ACT and National that the proceedings should be open to the public generally. We do not want situations where nosy neighbours can go along to see what the people next door are doing and we do not want them to have the right to sit in courtand do so. We have a situation where anyone whom the judge thinks it is appropriate to be there can be there. I think that is the right balance. If there are people who should be involved in the proceedings and who have an interest there and if it is appropriate to have them sitting in the courtroom then the flexibility is there to do that. 
There is an automatic right for the media to be there. The National Party is raising the fear that judges will habitually exclude the media. I do not think that will happen. I think we will find that the courts take the view that the media can sit in unless there are exceptional circumstances in which that should not be allowed. Effectively the Principal Family Court Judge told the select committee that he welcomed the fact that the media would be able to be present. That in itself is a signal that that is the way the judges will approach the situation. I think that is appropriate and I therefore think the balance we have is right. There is an automatic right for the media to be there. They need to be accredited otherwise anyone could turn up and claim to be a member of the media. Anyone could say that they were the publisher of the local neighbourhood newsletter and as a result they could turn up to find out what their neighbours were doing. So there does need to be an element enabling the judge to say no—there is a bottom line in terms of accreditation. I am confident that the courts will handle that properly. 
I do have a bit of concern about the Supplementary Order Paper that the Government has suddenly put in allowing for the publication of proceedings in legal psychological and other medical journals. That is wider than the scope that was there before. I thought what we had was quite good. It allowed automatic publication as long as the names or particulars likely to lead to identification of the parties were excluded. I can understand that the legal profession particularly might say that they do not want to have to go through every judgment and pull it out but this leaves the legislation open to abuse.