Time’s up for ‘equal rights’ in court custody battles
The government’s proposed move has incurred the wrath of some activists and warnings from the architects of the original 2005 policy, who suggest that dads could be “cut out” from seeing children.
The Albanese government went back to the future this week with family law reforms that flagged the end of the contentious presumption of “equal shared parental responsibility” in child custody cases.
Devised in 2005 by the Howard government as a way to address historical bias against fathers in custody, section 61DA of the Family Law Act was a provision that infuriated women’s groups and became a battleground for parting couples.
