Family court merger simple, Christian Porter says

Attorney-General Christian Porter has brushed aside Labor and crossbench concerns that an inquiry into reforms to scrap the Family Court is being rushed.

Shadow legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus. Picture: AAP.

Attorney-General Christian Porter has brushed aside concerns from Labor and key cross-bench senators that an inquiry into reforms to scrap the Family Court is being rushed.

The government has allowed just three weeks for the community respond to legislation to merge the Family Court and lower-level Federal Circuit Court. The new laws would also give judges new powers to hit family lawyers with personal costs orders if they fail to help ­resolve disputes as “quickly, ­inexpensively and efficiently” as possible.

Independent senator Derryn Hinch told The Australian he supported the amalgamation of the courts and “any measures to taken to speed up” the family law system.

However, he said he was “angry” the government used its committee numbers to “thwart” the senate vote for an April reporting date for an inquiry into the changes.

The government on Thursday introduced a bill to parliament to streamline the family law system and give judges new powers to hit family lawyers with personal costs orders if they fail to help ­resolve disputes as “quickly, ­inexpensively and efficiently” as possible.

Labor, the Greens and cross-bench senators voted for an inquiry into the changes that would have reported on April 15, allowing it to consider a broad-ranging report from the Australian Law Reform Commission into the family law system, which is due in March.

However, the Coalition used its numbers on the senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs committee to shorten the inquiry’s reporting date to November 26.

Submissions will now close on September 14.

Mr Porter said the legislation was “quite simple”, and most of it duplicated existing provisions that applied to the existing courts.

“The actual reforms are not overly complicated and we will work with the Senate committee members to ensure they have all the information they need to get the job done,” he said.

“There is no reason this needs to take six months.”

Attorney General Christian Porter.

He said three months was a “reasonable amount of time to produce a report”, especially when there had already been at least five reviews of the family law system.

“It’s time for all of us to get back to what we are paid to do and fix the family court system,” he said.

Calling on the government to reverse its decision and extend the reporting date, opposition legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus said the government’s timetable allowed no time for the committee to travel to regional communities to hear how they would be affected by the changes, and would likely limit hearings to “just the eastern states”.

“A change like this is too important to rush through,” he said.

“Vulnerable families and children in the court system need change — but they need change that is done properly and done right. Rushing a process like this is beyond comprehension.”

Centre Alliance senator Rex Patrick said when parliament resumed in two weeks he would move a motion to shift the submission closing date to late November.

He said it was “totally unacceptable” the government had “defied the will of the Senate” and intended to rush the inquiry.

“There’s over 600 pages of complex legislation and the committee expects judges, lawyers, family law stakeholders and mums and dads to read, consider and respond to the committee in just three weeks,” he said.

Senator Patrick said his party did not have a position on the bill at this point in time but would not vote for anything that had not been properly scrutinised.

Mr Porter has said the current system, with two separate courts handling family law was “letting Australian families down”, and that the reforms will allow an extra 8000 cases to be resolved a year — but lawyers have questioned these figures.

The government intends to create a new Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia from January 1. The Family Court’s existing judges will form Division 1 of the new court, while the Federal Circuit Court’s judges (who currently handle almost 90 per cent of family law cases) will form Division 2.

Appeals will be stripped from the new court and handed to the Federal Court.

A chief concern from lawyers and domestic violence advocates is that new judges handling child custody disputes and appeals will not have appropriate experience, especially to deal with cases involving violence.

However, under the proposed legislation, Division 1 judges will need specialist family law expertise (as is already the case for Family Court judges), while lower-level and appeal judges will be required to have “appropriate knowledge, skills and experience” to deal with the kinds of matters that may come before them.

The changes come after a PwC report found a wide gap in efficiency levels between the existing courts. Federal Circuit Court judges finalised about 338 cases a year, while Family Court judges finalised 114, and Family Court appeal judges wrote an average of 26 judgments each, it said. The report said litigants in the Family Court spent about $110,000 per case compared with $30,000 in the Federal Circuit Court.

It found the median time to trial in the Family Court had blown out to 17 months, up from 11.5 months five years ago, while the median time to trial in the Federal Circuit Court had increased to 15.2 months, up from 10.8 months. Some litigants are waiting up to three years to resolve their disputes.

However, some Family Court judges have been angered by the statistics, which they say do not account for differences between the courts’ caseloads and processes.