On 29 March 2023, the Albanese government announced two sets of legislative reforms set to improve safety in family law proceedings.
From our perspective, there is much to be excited about.
The primary aim of the reforms is to make separations safer for families and their children. The proposed legislation will require the Federal Circuit and Family Court to more adequately prioritise children’s safety concerns than it has done in the past. It will also seek to simplify parenting legislation and hinder the ability of abusive partners to manipulate the system through repeated court applications.
The draft Family Law Amendment Bill 2023 (the Bill) gives effect to key recommendations in the Australian Law Reform Commission’s 2019 review of the family law system.
The Bill seeks to reverse the adverse impacts of previous legislative amendments that had unintended consequences regarding the presumption of equal parental responsibility in 2006. It intends to do this by (in summary):
- simplifying considerations for determining what is in a child’s best interests
- removing the presumption of shared parental responsibility, by focus decision making on the child’s best interests and discouraging parentings from assuming the law allows them to have equal time
- codifying the rule in Rice v Asplund (1979) FLC 90-725, to ensure that a court cannot reconsider final parenting orders unless it has considered whether there has been a significant change in circumstances, or found it would be in the child’s best interests to be reconsidered
- requiring an independent children’s lawyer to meet with children over 5 years of age to endure a child’s view will be heard and considered
- providing the court with powers to protect children from the impacts of litigation, including the protecting of medical records for health services (including counselling records) and prevent a person from filing additional applications where this would be harmful to a child, and
- simplifying enforcement proceedings.
The second set of amendments aims to improve access to vital information sharing from state and territory family violence and child protection systems during proceedings. These include:
- introducing information-sharing orders for courts to quickly obtain information from police and child protection agencies about family violence, abuse and neglect
- ensuring these orders are available at any point during proceedings, and
- increasing protections to ensure sensitive information is disclosed safely.
The Bill “aims to put the best interests of children at the centre of the family law system,” the Albanese government said in a statement, along with “ending gender-based violence”. It also seeks to lead to a faster and less costly resolution of cases.
For further information regarding the proposed changes, please see our earlier article on the topic.
If you have any questions in relation to the changes, please don’t hesitate to contact a member of our Family & Relationship Law team.
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