Pauline Hanson’s call to scrap Family Court ignores putting child safety first

PAULINE Hanson’s suggestion that fewer fathers would murder family members if the Family Court was scrapped is her most irresponsible move, writes Wendy Tuohy.

Pauline Hanson has appeased a group that campaigned for her.

PAULINE Hanson has made some surprising moves, but her suggestion that fewer fathers would murder family members if the Family Court was scrapped is her most irresponsible.

Such a suggestion effectively removes responsibility for such men’s killing of women and children by blaming the court for driving them to it.

In case you missed it, Senator Hanson said “we will continue to see murders” if the frustration and depression inflicted on fathers by the Family Court continues.

The argument implies it is understandable that “frustration” with the Family Court drives these murderers to their crimes, and it provides an excuse for their violence.

It also has a whiff of blackmail about it, implying that children’s safety depends on giving men who are capable of murder greater access to them.

And her attempt to link the tragic problem of male suicide with a professional legal process, which is aimed at providing safe and stable custody arrangements for children, is not just brazen.

It’s a despicably dangerous way to appease her political backers.

In her Senate speech, designed to draw as much attention to herself as possible, her statements about Muslims and foreign investors drew the most heat.

But her comments about Family Court processes pose a real and urgent threat to child safety.

Senator Hanson, in the manner of someone handing over the controls of a packed 747 to a passenger during a storm, wants average citizens without legal training to take control of the destiny of children who could be in life-and-death situations.

Men’s frustration at the delays in an overloaded family law system matter.

Male suicide absolutely matters.

But when custody is being determined, it goes without saying that the safety of children should always come first.

As veteran family law expert Caroline Counsel, a former president of the Law Institute of Victoria, told the Herald Sun, the Family Court now manages to resolve 95 to 97 per cent of custody cases before they even get to a final hearing. Those fought to the end tend to be “some of the most dysfunctional and complex”.

Ms Counsel said that “creating another version of a court in the hope that somehow you’re going to make complex cases simple” was not an alternative.

Caroline Counsel says we should not listen to one interest group.

Senator Hanson’s campaign to have the Family Court dismantled is payback to one important sector of the constituency that got her back into parliament: the so-called fathers’ rights movement from Queensland.

She sang straight from their song sheet when she called the system “biased (against fathers) and unworkable”.

Would she prefer that it be biased against children?

To appease a group that campaigned for her, she painted a picture of men as victims, women as liars, and children as “pawns”. Ironically, the last one seemed accurate when you consider that the senator proposed removing a constitutionally enshrined layer of protection for them, in part to repay her supporters.

Asked by the Herald Sun how, realistically, this ad-hoc approach to child custody and support issues could play out, Ms Counsel said it was unimaginable that laymen could handle such cases as those involving mental illness, detailed medical reports, and the sorts of highly complex financial arrangements that are sometimes set up to dilute a spouse’s interests.

Commentators warning us not to dismiss the ridiculousness of Senator Hanson’s generalisations by laughing her off are right.

Even to hint at dismantling a rigorous system — at the heart of which is children’s wellbeing, not the political desires of an anti-women lobby group — is no laughing matter.

It is terrifying to think that an already fragile group — children in the middle of bitter custody wars — could be exposed to yet further risk by surrendering the determination of their fate to people with no experience in analysing evidence.

Senator Hanson’s desire to remove welfare from mothers for their second child, and subsequent children, adds to the impression that she is waging a war on separated women.

So does her comment that women are “blatantly vindictive”.

Her statements seek to minimise the responsibility that perpetrators of family violence bear for their actions.

But the real effect of the changes she seeks — to weaken the position of separated mothers — could be to put children’s welfare in jeopardy.

To play politics with the lives of powerless children in this way is inexcusable.

In the interests of respecting those with decades of real family law experience, let’s give Ms Counsel the last word: “Good policy for the whole of Australia is never born from listening to one interest group.

“And I don’t care who that is.”

Wendy Tuohy is a Herald Sun columnist

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