Opinion Howard Separated Dads South Sydney Herald 2005

OPINION

John Stapleton

FIVE years ago the separated fathers of Australia would have died in

the ditch for John Howard.

Now they want to lynch him.

The Prime Minister took this nation to war on the flimsiest of

evidence - far flimsier than the overwhelming evidence that the Family

Court of Australia and the Child Support Agency, along with their

handmaidens in Legal Aid and Centrelink, are in urgent need of reform.

It was five years ago that John Howard announced that he was attracted

to the idea of joint custody or shared parenting and that he would

initiate an inquiry on the matter. This was a vote changing issue and

Howard won himself a new legion of fans amongst separated dads, second

families and grandparents.

Five years on, after endless multi-million dollar enquiries committee

meetings, the bureaucrats, the lawyers, the social engineers and the

liars have won the day.

The government is likely to introduce this year the new Family Law

Amendment Bill promoting so-called "joint responsibility" amongst

separated parents.

This is an idiotically vague notion that will give the lawyers a field

day and means nothing on the ground. Intact couples don't agree on

many subjects.

Joint responsibility to do what? Choose the schools, what church the

kids are going to go to?

This was the bill that was going to introduce shared parenting as the

desired outcome post separation. The Bill does nothing of the kind,

and will perpetuate the abuses now occurring in the family law and

child support arena.

A gutless Howard government should have legislated for shared care and

responsibility of children as the norm post-separation. The proposal

that equal parenting should be "considered" by the Family Court will

make no difference to its current practice whatsoever. The court will

continue to perpetuate the discredited sole-mother custody model, with

all the pain and harm it creates to parents and children alike.

In August the Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs

tabled its report entitled Exposure Draft of the Family Law Amendment

(Shared Parental Responsibility) Bill 2005.

This shameful report followed two major inquiries into family law by

the Howard government, including the House of Representatives Family

and Community Services committee, led by national party MP Kay Hull,

which produced the poorly written and poorly argued report against

joint custody known as Every Picture Tells A Story.

The nation wide positive media attention that Howard attracted for his

support of shared parenting has gone.

At the time, even that soft left bible of the chattering classes the

Sydney Morning Herald ran articles promoting the common sense idea

that children have a right to a good relationship with both their

parents. Some of the toughest women journalists in Australia wrote

opinion pieces in support of sharing the care of children after

divorce.

The nation's media had finally woken up to the disaster in their midst.

The Family Court, now one of the despised institutions in Australian

history, was begun as a supposedly progressive reform by Gough Whitlam

in the 1970s aimed at advantaging women. Draconian secrecy legislation

made the court difficult to cover for journalists. But as well, for

many years the country's media was reluctant to cover the court

because they did not want to be seen as conservative or anti-feminist.

Separated fathers groups, unfunded and politically incorrect, were

bulldozed into oblivion by the countless reports from well funded

feminist lobby groups, feminist academics and feminist bureaucrats.

The media black out has finally dissipated, with, predictably, the

government run ABC about the last bastion of media support for the

court.

All the positive coverage John Howard received when he announced his

government wanted to reform child custody in this country has gone. At

our expense, the Attorney General Philip Ruddock recently toured the

country promoting the government's proposed new 65 "Relationship

Centres", centres which will now add another layer for separating

parents before they hit the Family Court.

Attorney General of Australia Philip Ruddock recently toured Australia

peddling the bureaucratic lie that his government is implementing the

most sweeping reforms to family law in 30 years. The government is

doing nothing of the kind.

In his tour of Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Darwin and Adelaide

Ruddock was confronted with furious fathers wherever he goes.

What was meant to be a triumphal tour to champion reforms to family

law turned rapidly into a fiasco.

He looked exactly like what he is: an old lawyer, poorly briefed,

defending the indefensible.

By his sneering and contemptuous attitude to separated fathers, he

made a whole new set of enemies. One father exiting the meeting at

Cranebrook, an obscure public housing enclave in far Western Sydney

where the government chose to make the announcement in order to

minimise demonstrations and objections, summed it up thus: "He was a

prick as Immigration Minister and he's a prick as Attorney General".

Excuse the language, but that's about as positive as it got.

By telling fathers that they are second class parents who do not

deserve to be granted joint custody of their children after separation

Ruddock delivered an insult not just to fathers but hundreds of

thousands of women as well, to grandparents, second partners, second

wives, siblings and everyone who cares about dads, their children and

the disaster that is being visited upon them by the extremist

anti-male anti-father bias of the current system.

The government chose to take heed of the so-called experts and

bureaucrats and ignore the voices of parents. They are now paying the

price. What was meant to be an electoral plus has simply provoked more

resentment. Media coverage has been lukewarm at best.

Make no mistake; the relationship centres the government is

establishing as a so-called first port of call after separation will

operate under the draconian secrecy provisions of the Family Law Act

and will perpetuate the same anti-father bias and the same

discrimination as the Family Court itself. No father can expect to be

treated fairly in these Relationship Centres. Those tendering for the

running of these centres, including Relationships Australia, have all

put in submissions opposing shared parenting; and have therefore

declared their bias up front. No father who wants to share the care of

their children will be given a civil ear or encouraged to do so.

In the process of touring the country Ruddock has made nonsensical

claims that the Family Court is not biased against men. It is

outrageous to make these claims in front of an audience of fathers and

their families who know it to be a nonsense; and who's own children

have been so savagely impacted by the serial bastardry of the Family

Court.

The evidence that children need and benefit from having a father in

their lives is overwhelming. As the man ultimately responsible for the

operations of the Family Court, and the man therefore ultimately

responsible for ripping hundreds of kids off their dads each week and

destroying any potential for them to have a good relationship with

their dads, Ruddock has in effect become the nation's chief child

abuser.

Numerous individuals and groups have made the point that the Family

Law Amendment Bill is a duplicitous piece of rubbish which will do the

nation's children yet more harm.

Why is a conservative government promoting a far left Marxist feminist

institution like the Family Court?

I think there are two major reasons.

The first is that lawyers back lawyers. Both Ruddock and Howard are

old lawyers who, as they have demonstrated, are prepared to put the

interests of lawyers and their mates in private practice, many of whom

have grown fat from the misery of the divorce industry, well in front

of the interests of the public.

The second is that the government cannot admit that the Family Court

is a biased and extremist organisation for fear of class actions from

hundreds of thousands of disgruntled fathers. While there have been

various attempts at such class actions, they have so far been

unsuccessful. A government admission of what is already common

knowledge, that the court is an antiquated institution perpetuating an

outdated style of feminism which portrays all fathers as oppressive

and abusive members of the patriarchy would make such class actions

far simpler.

In effect it is the same reason the government was so reluctant to

publish an official apology to indigenous Australia: money.

While the Howard government is using the rhetoric that it supports the

right of children to a good relationship with both parents, not one

kid will see their dad for one extra day as a result of the new Family

Law Reform Bill.

Not only that; the Howard government is encouraging an even further

rash of false allegations of domestic violence by including domestic

violence provisions in the Family law act. The government has pandered

to the propaganda of the taxpayer funded domestic violence industry.

It has deliberately promoted public hysteria over domestic violence

and deliberately misrepresented its prevalence. Including domestic

violence provisions in the Family Law Act will not protect children.

It simply means that the ideologically driven Family Court, which has

no rules of evidence that translate to the real world, will be ripping

kids off their dads with even further gay abandon.

The Family Court must be delighted their power over separating

families is being even further expanded.

The Howard government has arbitrarily and contemptuously dismissed the

voices of fathers and father's groups and has dismissed the

exceptionally strong arguments for joint custody or shared parenting.

The recommendations that a judge or advisers consider equal parenting,

contained in the latest committee recommendations, means nothing when

you get into the legal cesspit that is the Family Court.

There is enormous community support for shared parenting not just from

men, but from second wives, grandparents and from young women who,

used to the notion of being treated equally, cannot understand why

separated men and their children are treated so badly.

The upper classes in this country or already affecting a cultural

change in favour of shared parenting, failing to see why they should

waste time, money and angst on a pack of lawyers and why their kids

shouldn't be able to move freely between both their parents houses. It

is the people without substantial incomes, those who are more likely

to turn to welfare for support, who will be most badly affected by the

government's failures.

The Howard government has blown an historic opportunity to make the

shared care of children the norm post-separation. As such they are

visiting the ravages of the Family Court and the Child Support Agency

on whole new generations of working class fathers, their extended

families and their children.

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