Newman Muriel: Care of Children Bill — Instruction to Committee Procedure In Committee 
Newman Muriel: Care of Children Bill — Instruction to Committee Procedure In Committee 
[Volume:621;Page:16630] 
Dr MURIEL NEWMAN (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 The ACT party will be voting against the Care of Children Bill as well but I would like to put on the record where we stand over this whole issue of family law reform. If the Committee thinks back to the period 2000-01 that was when a bill that actually started off a lot of the debate about family law was debated in Parliament; it was a member’s bill to introduce shared parenting. It appeared to me in my research about how to try to ensure that children in New Zealand do better and particularly those kiddies whose parents have separated and have had to go through the whole trauma of family breakdown that some countries had done better than others— in particular countries like Sweden Holland and many states in America where they had brought into their family law something that they called “shared parenting”. It was an interesting concept which I brought into our New Zealand Parliament back then. Labour voted down that bill but promised to come back to this Parliament with some legislation that would actually address those issues. 
It is with a great deal of sadness that I was not able to convince the Government to look at introducing shared parenting into this Care of Children Bill because the principle of shared parenting is one that is just based on common sense. Essentially that principle means that just as two parents are considered to be equal in their rights and their responsibilities towards their child or children before a family breaks down so too should those two parents still be considered equal in terms of their rights and responsibilities after a family breaks down. That in fact should be the case unless the other parent can prove that one is unfit to be a good parent. 
What we have in New Zealand is the opposite of that. We have had a situation where those parents who do not need to go to lawyers do not need to go to the Family Court often end up with shared parenting arrangements which work very well because the courts do not hear about those cases. But for those parents who are locked into a battle over the children the history in New Zealand has been of giving sole custody to one of the parents and traditionally it has been the mothers but the sad part about it is that the fathers have been locked out. That has given rise to growing levels of fatherlessness in New Zealand and a growing concern by all sorts of New Zealanders and in fact State authorities over the impact on children of growing up without a dad in their lives. 
So when we have sole custody going to one parent and the other one ending up by being locked out we get problems. Shared parenting was a way of addressing those problems and trying to bring a better balance back into the way we deal with family law that deals with children in New Zealand. 
I suppose the greatest sadness from my perspective is that we heard what rebuttable shared parenting could do. We call it “rebuttable shared parenting” because it is a default position; it means that when a couple separate if they are both decent people then they have to make the arrangements for how best to look after their child by working out what is in the best interests of their child. Whether it is the children or child living with mum during the week and dad at the weekends or whatever it happens to be it is up to them to make the individual set of arrangements that best suit their child. 
In countries where they have shared parenting 20 to 30 different types of arrangements tend to be the ones that parents agree to. It takes the warfare out of the divorce situation the separation. It makes sure the child does not lose either mum or dad or grandparents or other family members as well. I cannot for the life of me understand why the Labour Government did not agree to at least bringing this type of provision into family law given that this is the best opportunity that New Zealand has ever had.