Pauline Hanson backs court merger

The Morrison government has inched closer to achieving its plan to reshape the family law system by merging the Family Court and lower-level Federal Circuit.

Senator Pauline Hanson. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen

The Morrison government has inched closer to achieving its plan to reshape the family law system by merging the Family Court and lower-level Federal Circuit.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has agreed to support the plan, despite fierce opposition from the legal profession, after a senate inquiry last week recommended the bill to merge the two courts be passed.

However, Attorney-General Christian Porter will still need to win the support of crossbench senator Rex Patrick or Stirling Griff to pass the bill. Both said they were undecided on Tuesday. Labor, the Greens and senator Jacqui Lambie are opposed to the merger.

Both the Family Court and Federal Circuit Court are currently struggling with a massive backlog of cases, causing long delays for families.

Mr Porter has said that merging the two courts will improve efficiency and stop families bouncing between them.

However, the Law Council of Australia has warned the merger will not fix the problems caused by chronic under-resourcing and will result in a lack of family law specialisation.

A spokesman for Senator Hanson said she supported the merger of the two courts.

“She believes it will streamline the legal processes,” he said.

Under the proposal, a new Federal Circuit and Family Court would be created, with Family Court judges to form Division 1 of the new court, and Federal Circuit Court judges, who perform almost 90 per cent of family law work and also preside over general federal work, to form Division 2.

The government has made substantial amendments to its initial plan, which was, eventually, to scrap the Family Court. It intended to do so by sending family law appeals to the Federal Court and no longer appointing trial judges to Division 1. Abolishing a court is difficult because judges are given tenure until the age of 70 and cannot be removed other than for proven misbehaviour or incapacity.

However, in a deal struck with Senator Patrick, the government had agreed in the last parliament to amend the bill by legislating a minimum of 25 judges in Division 1 and keeping appeals within the court.

This minimum requirement has not been included in the current bill.

Senator Patrick said this was a key sticking point, as well as resourcing.

The senate committee inquiring into the bill last week urged the government to “strongly consider” amending the bill to legislate a 25-judge minimum for Division 1.

Mr Porter said last week he intended to progress the bills through parliament “as a priority” in the last two sitting weeks of the year. He told The Australian he and his office had restarted discussions with crossbench senators.

“The need for reform in this area is well known and with this reform being the least radical path to meaningful change, the time to act is now,” he said.

A Law Council spokeswoman said it remained of the view that the amendments made to the bill were “insufficient to cure what is a flawed and dangerous proposal without evidentiary or credible economic foundation”.

“By collapsing the present world-acclaimed stand-alone specialist Family Court into a generalist court, the merger will still in effect abolish the Family Court as we know it and harm vulnerable children and families in need of specialist family law assistance,” she said.