A new Bill which removes the presumption that separated parents should automatically have equal access to their children has been put to Australia’s parliament today by MP Graham Perrett.
Perrett launched the Bill after an estranged husband who murdered his wife and their three children in February sparked outrage in Australia.
Hannah Clarke and Aaliyah (6), Laianah (4) and Trey (3) were set on fire inside the family car after Rowan Baxter poured petrol over them. Mr Baxter stabbed himself to death, after preventing onlookers from trying to put out the fire inside the car.
Ms. Clarke and Mr Baxter were engaged in mediation over contact with their children.
Several national news outlets reported that the father had a history of violence and sexual assault. He had also been subjected to a domestic violence order shortly before the incident took place for trying to kidnap their eldest daughter in December.
Perrett told Australia’s parliament that removing the presumption would prevent abusers from manipulating the law to control or harm ex partners and their children.
“There is a widely shared misconception that equal shared responsibility means equal shared care,” he said, adding, “This can incentivise an abusive partner to litigate their parenting dispute.”
The Bill is supported by several family law experts and domestic violence researchers.
Women’s Legal Service Queensland has also backed the Bill, through the creation of a petition which has gathered almost 3,000 signatures.
The petition page explains that up to 85% of family court cases in Australia involve domestic and family violence, and that from a statistical perspective, the presumption increases the chances of children being exposed to violence.
Debate in the UK about whether England and Wales should implement a presumption of equal and shared parenting took place last year. Fathers’ rights groups such as Families Need Fathers campaigned for the law to be changed so that children would have to spend roughly equal time with their parents after a separation or divorce.
Attempts to change the law in Britain have not been successful, after a Bill produced by a Conservative MP proposing a presumption of shared parenting failed to make its way through Parliament.
Current legislation in England and Wales states that the involvement of the non-resident parent in the life of a child will further the child’s welfare, but does not go so far as to create a presumption about the amount of time a child should spend with each parent.
Many thanks to the National Child Protection Alliance for alerting us to this development.
Photo courtesy of ABC News
Researching Reform 
The policy objectives of the 2006 changes to the family law system in Australia were to:
help to build strong healthy relationships and prevent separation;
encourage greater involvement by both parents in their children’s lives after separation, and also protect children from violence and abuse;
help separated parents agree on what is best for their children (rather than litigating), through the provision of useful information and advice, and effective dispute resolution services; and
establish a highly visible entry point that operates as a doorway to other services and helps families to access these other services.3
Presumption of Equal Shared Parental Responsibility
Under section 61DA(1) of the Family Law Act 1975, there is a presumption of equal shared parental responsibility when making parenting orders as it is in the best interests of the child. However, this presumption may be rebutted under either section 61DA(2) or 61DA(4):
(1) When making a parenting order in relation to a child, the court must apply a presumption that it is in the best interests of the child for the child’s parents to have equal shared parental responsibility for the child.
(2) The presumption does not apply if there are reasonable grounds to believe that a parent of the child (or a person who lives with a parent of the child) has engaged in:
(a) abuse of the child or another child who, at the time, was a member of the parent’s family (or that other person’s family); or
(b) family violence.
(3) When the court is making an interim order, the presumption applies unless the court considers that it would not be appropriate in the circumstances for the presumption to be applied when making that order.
(4) The presumption may be rebutted by evidence that satisfies the court that it would not be in the best interests of the child for the child’s parents to have equal shared parental responsibility for the child.
See http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/fla1975114/s61da.html
If there is an order for equal shared parental responsibility the court must consider equal time but there is no presumption of same. To decide about the amount of time that a child spends with each parent the court is guided by what is in the best interests of the child.
If the presumption is applied the court must then consider whether the child spending time equally with each parent is in his or her best interests, (Family Law Act 1975- Sect 65DAA)
See http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/fla1975114/s65daa.html
This brings me to Graham Perrett’s private members Bill that seeks to do away the modest 2006 family law reforms.
Anti-shared parenting forces opposed the law literally from the start. They waited all of three months after its effective date to begin demanding its repeal and have been beating that drum ever since.
The domestic violence establishment has long been, along with divorce lawyers, a steadfast opponent of children retaining meaningful relationships with both parents when the adults split up. The excuse they offer is that when a mother claims a father is abusive, he is. Mothers never lie to gain an advantage in custody proceedings. As a corollary to that, mothers never engage in parental alienation of children, which, in any case does not exist. And of course, they have their sycophants in the press and in the parliament.
The likes of Graham Perrett have a way of picking and choosing the domestic violence they condemn and the domestic violence they forgive. Domestic violence committed by men invariably gets their opprobrium. That committed by women. Not so much.
Brazenly, without bothering to adduce any substantiating chain of evidence, there being none, Perrett and extremist feminist spokeswomen linked the horrific crime of a lone sociopath seeking revenge for a failed relationship to the general phenomenon of domestic violence against women. Rowan Baxter who doused his wife and children with petrol before setting them alight “became” all men who want to control women—eventually all heterosexual men.
That horrible tragedy was a staple of Australian news for many weeks and all of the coverage has been in the same vein—”See what men do.”
Also, it is impossible not to note the disparity in the response to the deaths of Hannah Clarke and her children. Where were the tears when a Melbourne mother drugged her 5 and 9-year-old sons and burnt them alive in a house fire to avenge a damaged relationship, or when a Gelong mother of 5 deliberately set her husband on fire in the presence of their children?
No tears were shed when Tamara Gurney murdered her three-year-old daughter Lyla, just one day after losing a bitter custody battle with her ex-partner. No leading lights stood up on behalf of little Lyla or her father. No interviews on A Current Affair. There were no calls for change.
And to set the record straight of where I stand. There are no ifs and buts about Rowan Baxter’s murder suicide and l unequivocally condemn what he did. Nothing can ever excuse the slaughter of the innocent.
However, when mothers slaughter their own, the self-proclaimed defenders of children’s interests go missing.
Perrett has seized on a single horrible incident that took place in February of this year to attempt to (a) change Australian family law to marginalize fathers in the lives of their children even more than they already are and (b) short circuit the inquiry into family law now in progress.
The Joint Select Committee on Australia’s Family Law System 2020, of which he is a member, has finished collecting submissions and will produce its report sometime in October of this year. That of course places Perrett’s effort in an unflattering context. It’s as if he doesn’t trust the Joint Select Committee to do its job the way he wants and is trying to make statutory changes ahead of its report, the better to neuter its recommendations.
Whatever the case, his timing is suspect to say the least. After all, if family violence is not so unusual, why didn’t he seize on a previous case to make his bid?
That question may be answered by the fact that, in Australia as elsewhere, mothers commit more child abuse and neglect than do fathers and some of that is lethal to the children. So yes, Perrett could have raised the issue earlier, but doing so might have required him to choose an incident involving a mother as the perpetrator to use as his stalking horse. But that wouldn’t have suited Perrett’s narrative that is the same as that of the local domestic violence establishment. For many years now they’ve been intent on marginalizing fathers in children’s lives and what could better fit their purpose than something dreadful like the slaying of Hanna Clarke and her children?
And then there is the fact that Australian family law as it currently exists, is scarcely a shared parenting advocate’s dream. Its sole nod to shared parenting is its statement that judges must “consider” ordering equal parenting time. That’s it. They need not order it of course, but only consider it. And even that was considered too onerous by Graham Perrett and his band of supporters
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