- 2GB-Alan Jones-Custody
- By Alan Jones
- Alan Jones Today show Editorial - 2GB
- 28/04/2004 Make a Comment
- Contributed by: admin ( 100 articles in 2004 )
Well, the Federal government is moving ahead with a plan to overhaul the way child custody disputes are resolved.
Reports suggest that Federal Cabinet has approved the establishment of a Families Tribunal, which will encourage separating parents to agree to joint custody of their children.
The two year trial of the tribunal is aimed at reducing the adversarial dimensions of the Family Court. It will comprise child experts, psychologists and a judge or a senior lawyer and exclude lawyers.
The now departed Chief Justice of the Family Court, Alistair Nicholson, has been very critical of these proposals, especially plans to limit the availability of lawyers to the proposed Families Tribunal as "a serious attack on civil liberties."
The tribunal is the brainchild of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Community Affairs which wants to give the tribunal the power to make binding orders on child custody.
The Family Court would then be required to use its judicial powers to enforce the tribunal's decisions.
Mr. Justice Nicholson says the structure cannot work.
Well, one thing has to be accepted.
And that is the Family Court and the Child Support Agency have been the instruments of awful family tragedy.
Only this week we heard of an apparent murder suicide in Brisbane which claimed the lives of two young children and their father.
The mother and father separated last month.
Last Friday, the Family Court ruled that the father would not be the primary carer of the children.
At 6.30pm on Sunday, three bodies were found in a house at Kelvin Grove in Brisbane.
The father had been a political candidate in the Queensland election, campaigning for family law reform and changes to the Child Support Agency.
In recent weeks he had threatened to harm his family and end it all.
Many complain about the Child Support Agency making calculations on the basis of gross wages, but the deductions come from the net wage.
Many men are left with hardly enough money to live on, let alone to try to start a new life.
Often the decisions of the Family Court on custody and property settlements defy logic.
I have had hundreds of letters from fathers telling me that the Court almost always favours the mother regardless of circumstances.
The trouble is, applying the law to an area as difficult as family break-up is never easy.
The law is clinical, factual and cold.
And in the middle of the war are the innocent victims, the children.
A couple of years ago, Sir Bob Geldof called for the British child custody laws to be scrapped for discriminating against fathers.
Bob Geldof said, "I was handed a piece of paper saying, "You may see your children on this day and every second weekend." Why? What had I done?"
He said, "I saw them everyday. I took them to school. I bathed them, fed them, cooked for them. Why now is the State and all its instruments of justice aimed at me."
And he said the current laws were outdated, unfair and extremely discriminatory against the fathers.
My correspondence tells me that there are many fathers saying the same thing here.
Whether the proposed Families Tribunal will limit the anguish and the fall-out, only time will tell.
Reports suggest that Federal Cabinet has approved the establishment of a Families Tribunal, which will encourage separating parents to agree to joint custody of their children.
The two year trial of the tribunal is aimed at reducing the adversarial dimensions of the Family Court. It will comprise child experts, psychologists and a judge or a senior lawyer and exclude lawyers.
The now departed Chief Justice of the Family Court, Alistair Nicholson, has been very critical of these proposals, especially plans to limit the availability of lawyers to the proposed Families Tribunal as "a serious attack on civil liberties."
The tribunal is the brainchild of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Community Affairs which wants to give the tribunal the power to make binding orders on child custody.
The Family Court would then be required to use its judicial powers to enforce the tribunal's decisions.
Mr. Justice Nicholson says the structure cannot work.
Well, one thing has to be accepted.
And that is the Family Court and the Child Support Agency have been the instruments of awful family tragedy.
Only this week we heard of an apparent murder suicide in Brisbane which claimed the lives of two young children and their father.
The mother and father separated last month.
Last Friday, the Family Court ruled that the father would not be the primary carer of the children.
At 6.30pm on Sunday, three bodies were found in a house at Kelvin Grove in Brisbane.
The father had been a political candidate in the Queensland election, campaigning for family law reform and changes to the Child Support Agency.
In recent weeks he had threatened to harm his family and end it all.
Many complain about the Child Support Agency making calculations on the basis of gross wages, but the deductions come from the net wage.
Many men are left with hardly enough money to live on, let alone to try to start a new life.
Often the decisions of the Family Court on custody and property settlements defy logic.
I have had hundreds of letters from fathers telling me that the Court almost always favours the mother regardless of circumstances.
The trouble is, applying the law to an area as difficult as family break-up is never easy.
The law is clinical, factual and cold.
And in the middle of the war are the innocent victims, the children.
A couple of years ago, Sir Bob Geldof called for the British child custody laws to be scrapped for discriminating against fathers.
Bob Geldof said, "I was handed a piece of paper saying, "You may see your children on this day and every second weekend." Why? What had I done?"
He said, "I saw them everyday. I took them to school. I bathed them, fed them, cooked for them. Why now is the State and all its instruments of justice aimed at me."
And he said the current laws were outdated, unfair and extremely discriminatory against the fathers.
My correspondence tells me that there are many fathers saying the same thing here.
Whether the proposed Families Tribunal will limit the anguish and the fall-out, only time will tell.
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