Community radio program Dads On The Air was in a singular position to cover and even at times to contribute to the years of government reports, committee inquiries, public debate and media coverage on reforms promoting cooperative care of children after divorce. While our politicians could take us into unwise multibillion dollar wars on the toss of a coin, or more precisely an unwise allegiance to a dangerous ally America, witness Iraq, witness Afghanistan, witness Ukraine, fixing our own internal war against fathers and fatherhood, propelled by ideologies birthed in he universities half a century ago, has proved beyond our political class.
Conservative Prime Minister John Howard mounted an inquiry into shared custody in 2003 which gathered significant public support and positive media coverage but then failed to act. Australia’s politicians are frightened of the very monster they created, the literally hundreds of taxpayer funded women’s legal services, advocacy groups, refuges, and an armada of feminist academics and activist judges. All this multibillion dollar army, benefiting from the demonisation of men, is arrayed against the unfunded, voluntary fathers and pro-family community groups which have not a hope of getting their voices heard. Howard ran his government in a 1980s managerial style. Endless inquiries, commissions and reports gave an illusion of action. Nothing ever changed. He was finally embarrassed into taking action after a pesky journalist wrote a story noting that he had initiated dozens of inquiries, and instituted not a single recommendation from any of them.
Finally, two years after the initial report the family law reform legislation was tabled in Parliament, on December 8, 2005, again at a time of year when the public, and many of the major players in Australian media, are knocking off for Christmas holidays and not paying the slightest attention to politics. Another sleight of hand.
It was very dirty politics aimed to deceive.
Howard, a lawyer by training, had already appointed a replacement for the long serving Chief Justice Alastair Nicholson who he knew perfectly well would do nothing to change the nature of the court. Her name was Diana Bryant, who would serve as Chief Justice for 2004 to 2017, and who would leave the court in just as parlous a state as her predecessors.
Then Attorney-General Philip Ruddock was left holding the can. His press release stated that the Family Law Amendment (Shared Parental Responsibility) Bill 2005 reflected the “Government’s determination to ensure the right of children to grow up with the love and support of both their parents”. It was little better than a lie.
Insisting on calling the extremely modest amendments to the Act “the most significant reforms to the family law system in 30 years”, Ruddock toured the country promoting his view of the progressive nature of the law changes. As always when he came on Dads On The Air he endured a solid grilling with good spirit.
These changes, essentially inclusions in the Objects of the Act to encourage judges to look at the notion of “shared responsibility”, were finally made into law by the Australian government headed by then Prime Minister John Howard in 2006 as a bipartisan initiative.
Too little too late and too easily overturned, Dads On The Air declared. And all directed at a court notoriously resistant to change. Sadly, we were proved correct. The many thousands of volunteer hours that members of fathers and family law had put into pushing for reform were ignored. And a significant social movement swept under the carpet, buried as if it had never been.
Almost immediately following the election of a left leaning Labor government headed by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in 2007 the process of winding back even these modest reforms began in an entirely partisan way. In Australia family law amendments had never previously been introduced without bipartisan support.
The debate continues to this day.
