One Big Happy Family

Up until earlier this year a very public death of a child sparked outrage in Australia, the Attorney General, the Chief Justice and the Shared Parenting Council were one big happy family.  All were working in synchronicity to contain concerns about Australia's shared parenting bill.  Outside the family court, few were aware of the Shared Parenting Councils views on violence against women and children and even fewer were aware of what the actual laws entailed.  One law required women to prove to the court that they, "reasonably feared" the perpetrator with the court appointed psychologist and very little weight given to outside professionals even if they had been supporting the family for a number of years.  


Other barriers included the bizarre, but frighteningly common ban on sending the child to counsellors or specialists trained to investigate child abuse.  These are the daily happenings of the family court that only those who have set foot in are truly aware of.   In the wider community, such practices are absurd to say the least and something that one would expect from a third world country.  The shared parenting councils website was funded by the child support agency as part of a pilot program to ensure that parents could access information about the changes.  What users of the forum did not expect was the deplorable treatment of women and clear discrimination that was made against them.  Thankfully, this was raised and agreed upon among other mothers in another online forum that this site was a fathers rights website attempting to sabotage and exploit victims of family violence that were forced to endure the court system.  What was also bizarre, was the relationships between the Family Court and the Shared Parenting Council that further polarized women and children's experiences.  Below is an email from the members of the shared parenting council asking the other to run it past Diana Bryant. 


 Click on the image to read it properly:
  

In the forum, is another example of where one of the members called the chief justice and the other member is insulting him, but describing her as someone who knows her well.  


Click on the image to read it properly:

Although fathers rights groups have made it clear that their preference is for Philip Ruddock, below is a photo of the shared parenting council and the attorney general:

Below is a response from the attorney generals department regarding family relationship centers after the family relationships hotline was established.

Clearly, there is a good reason as to why mothers and children are not confident about the proposed changes.  Many tricks were used in past reforms to divert mothers and children's rights from becoming a reality.  The submissions for the shared parenting bill were doubled by the same group of people and their families to create the illusion that there were more than there were.  It is a reason why mothers groups will continue to pressure key stakeholders in ensuring that they will provide adequate protection from victims of family violence.