Carter John: Care of Children Bill — Instruction to Committee Procedure In Committee 
Carter John: Care of Children Bill — Instruction to Committee Procedure In Committee 
[Volume:621;Page:16633] 
JOHN CARTER (National—Northland) 
: 
 I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak on this legislation. I do so from the perspective of having listened carefully to the speeches that have been made by members who are concerned about and opposed to this bill. I join them in their opposition to this bill and this sort of legislation. The reason for that is that far too often now Parliament passes a lot of mumbo-jumbo politically correct laws that have no place in our society. We try to be so prescriptive as to deal with every possibility every connotation and everything that may happen and of course we cannot do that in law. 
Instead of spending time here on writing laws that are so prescriptive that we will have to come back and fix them up because we have missed something it would be far better to write laws that encourage parents to look after their children. The sad fact is that we have in this society as in all societies marriages that break up. The problem is that it is the children who are the losers. Under this sort of law what we are finally going to end up with is one parent only. I know the Government will say that it is actually trying to encourage both parents to be involved. We cannot do that by prescription—we cannot write laws that force people to do something. We must write laws that encourage and enable parents to continue to meet their responsibilities even if they are not living together as a couple. This law will fail absolutely. This law that we will probably pass today—because the Government would not have brought it in here to the Chamber if it did not have the numbers to do that—will not encourage both parents to work together in the best interests of the children. Surely that is what Parliament should do. Surely we should look first and foremost to ensure that the child gets the best contact he or she can with both parents. I say to the Government that this bill will not achieve that at all. 
We have got to the stage where we have become so prescriptive in our legislation that we cause stupid decisions to be made repeatedly—to the point where we take away people’s rights take away parental responsibility and cause further problems for people who are grappling with difficult personal situations. We do so because we stand here as a Parliament and say that we can write law because we know best because we can foresee every set of circumstances and because we understand everything that is going to happen. We say that we will put it down in legislation and include every bit of detail so that nothing will go wrong. What a lot of absolute nonsense that is! If members of Parliament look at the laws we have passed in the last decade they will find that there are great gaps in them­—something happens; there is a set of circumstances occurring right now that we did not know about and did not write law for—that somebody falls through. Sadly because we write prescriptive law instead of laws that enable people we end up writing laws that cause more problems and more heartache. 
This bill will do exactly that. Mark my words we will be back in this House in another 2 years or 5 years saying what a great shame it was that the Care of Children Bill did not do this or that. We will end up doing exactly that for the very reason that we have tried to forecast everything that can possibly happen between two people who have a marriage break-up when they have children. Instead of looking at how we can encourage those parents to continue to work together in the interests of their children and their family even if they are not living together—enabling people to work together—we end up writing laws that give some instruction or another. I say to this Committee that that will be an absolute failure. The sad thing is that we are doing it again. Every time that I take the call on this bill I will talk about our writing too much prescriptive legislation instead of writing legislation that enables people.