Collins Judith: Care of Children Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Collins Judith: Care of Children Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:621;Page:16675] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 As the honourable member Dail Jones has said Part 3 is just another example of the Government saying it will reword the law a bit and we will all feel a lot better for that. Well we will not—not one bit.Some of the provisions in this bill need to have a very good looking-at. One of them relates to the opening up of the Family Court. There is one person in this Parliament who needs to be congratulated on the work he has done to open up the Family Court and that is the Hon Nick Smith. Nick Smith has put himself his career his family and his money on the line. He did that for his constituents and it has resulted in a huge groundswell of support for the opening up of the Family Court. But the Government has responded with a whimper and nothing more and that is why we are not supporting this part. The whimpering-type openingup of the Family Court is just that and nothing more than that. 
I am very concerned about the term “accredited media”. The accredited media will be allowed to report on the Family Court and will have their reports looked at and approved by the judge. What sort of accredited media are going to report on that basis? Well I have been told by the news media who might have been interested in looking at the workings and non-workings of the Family Court that they simply will not be interested in reporting like that. The news media are not there to put out the politically correct nonsense that comes from this Government. They are not there to pander to the will of incompetent people who happen to be practising or not practising within the Family Court—and I have certainly seen a lot of that in my time. I have seen people who as counsel for the child did not even bother to see the child before they made reports supposedly on behalf of the child. I have seen social workers who did not get reports back to the court in time and I have seen people who abused the secrecy in the court and hid behind it so that their incompetence and greed were hidden. 
The losers from all that are of course the poor little children who happen to be the subject of the proceedings. That is who loses. Dr Nick Smith went out for those kids and he went out for parents and this Government every day that it gets the opportunity to do so in this Chamber slams him for it. This part of the bill was the Government’s opportunity to make a few amends for children and it has not done that. The Government members whimpered—because they are not there for parents and for children. They are there for the so-called professionals who are currently not doing their jobs. 
This provision is a big whitewash. It is a cop-out. It is everything we would expect from this Government when it comes to family issues and nothing more. This bill will not improve the situation very much at all. It will improve the reporting for lawyers by lawyers and that is all. It will improve the system for the professionals. What will it do for those families who feel that their views as families are being ignored? Nothing. What will it do for families who feel that their professional advisors or their social workers—the people who are there for them and their children supposedly—are not doing their job? What about the people who feel that those social workers are kowtowing to the political correctness that this Government loves so much and what about the people who are in fact lazy incompetent people who are not doing their jobs? What will this legislation do for the really good professional people who are struggling in that environment and who look around and see their colleagues sit around wasting time wasting taxpayers’ dollars and wasting the youth of those people? What will it do for those good professionals? Nothing because they will not have the opportunity to use this law to expose that. Yet again secrecy is there for the benefit of the professionals.