The reforms to Part VII of the Family Law Act 1975 (Cth), introduced by the Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Act 2006 were wide-ranging. Among the most significant of those reforms was the introduction of a rebuttable presumption of equal shared parental responsibility and particular obligations placed on family courts to consider ‘equal time’ and ‘substantial and significant time’ arrangements where the presumption applies. Another important change was made to the ‘best interest’ factors – factors that a court has regard to in deciding what order would be in the best interests of the child who is the subject of a parenting dispute – which as a result of the reforms are now divided into ‘primary’ and ‘additional’ considerations.
At the same time that the Government implemented the legislative amendments referred to, it also established Family Relationship Centres around Australia and funded many other non-Government organisations to provide advice, counselling and mediation designed to assist separating parents reach their own agreements.
The aim was to encourage parents to consider, where appropriate, reaching an agreement regarding parenting arrangements in the first instance themselves rather than having the court as a first option. The agreements were intended to be reached having regard to the change of legislation. Given this, it is to be expected that there might be a higher number of shared care or substantial sharing of time cases negotiated outside the courts.
It was axiomatic that if the cases capable of resolution were diverted from the courts then both the Family Court and the Federal Magistrates Court would be dealing with a more difficult class of case.
The Family Court in particular, deals with the most complex family law matters. These include parenting cases that may involve multiple parties, including those that involve a child welfare agency and/or allegations of sexual abuse or serious physical abuse of a child (Magellan cases), family violence, mental health and substance abuse issues and cases where a parent wishes to move interstate or overseas with a child.
In her State of the Nation address in 2006, Chief Justice Diana Bryant acknowledged the increasing complexity of the cases coming to the Family Court:
“It is those very cases that will be dealt with in the Family Court – cases of violence, abuse and entrenched conflict, which will, by their nature, be less likely to lead to the cooperative parenting that the government wants parties to have and the kind of orders that would support them.”
From the commencement of the legislation the Chief Justice decided that the court would, for the first time, endeavour to keep statistics on the kind of orders that were being made with a view to understand the results that were being obtained by the parties coming to court. In addition to the cases where Judges were making a decision statistics have also been recorded of matters coming to court but in which the parties reached their own agreement without the necessity of a decision from a Judge.
The collection of and analysis of that data has been a complex one. Parenting orders are not particularly straight forward by their nature and can often involve some complexities which complicate the recording process. Thus it has taken some time for the court to be in a position to be satisfied that the reports are accurate and meaningful. That point has now been reached and an analysis of the 2007-2008 shared parental responsibility statistics are now available above for viewing.
Go back to top of page