Thanks to  Pete Nicholls from Dads in Distress for this important notification of pending changes to family law in its interaction with domestic violence.
It is urgent if any has some time to put in  a submission.
The govt have put out to consultation, a proposed change of family law relating to DV.
Responses must be in by this Friday, the 20th. We at DIDs/PBB were given a little over a week to respond. We’re still working out way through the detail.
One thing I’ve noticed this morning… whilst others working on this are focussing on the shift of family law from federal to state courts, I think they’ve missed the trojan horse here.
That is, in shifting the cases, ‘local’ judges need to be trained up how to handle family cases and this will be achieved in two ways. (1) a benchbook advising DV practice and (2) training to take place in June 2017.
No idea whats in the training or who’s doing it BUT we know the benchbook is written by womens groups and is horrifically anti-male in terms of assuming all men are perps.
So, in shifting the courts handling the cases, they’ve created an opening to ‘need’ to train judges but in a far more anti-male way than family court judges were before them. Very sneaky.
No male group I can see has been consulted in the benchbook (judicial guidance) and/or training.
The govt are using the ANROWs data to claim men must be handled differently in any DV in family cases.
Consultation document:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B13JM_fZJJyAeEozcEFBMTZwZUk/view?usp=sharing
Page 5 references the benchbook which can be found here:
http://dfvbenchbook.aija.org.au/contents
Section 4 references duluth as the ‘default model’ and multiple references throughout to male perps and needing to protect women etc… Its scary if non family judges are now to be taught this and told to enact it formally.
The above is PART 1 of the benchbook, issued Au2016. Part 2 is being issued together with training in June 2017, way AFTER the consultation period closes. So, its a fait en complete.
Who knows what will be in part two on DV?
The very clever trick here is to get minimum number of bodies (almost no male bodies) to comment on proposed law changes, but leave the guidance for judges to be issued long after the consultation. So, what judges are trained and told to do might have little bearing on what the law says. This is very sneaky.
i.e. law says ‘anyone’ found to be committing DV can be ‘punished’. Guidance says only men are to be enacted as such.
Re ANROWS… here is the relevant section in the benchbook:
Domestic and family violence can affect any person irrespective of age, gender, socio-economic status or cultural background. It is widely acknowledged however that women are significantly more likely than men to experience domestic and family violence
The reference at the end of that sentence links to this:
http://anrows.org.au/sites/default/files/Violence-Against-Australian-Women-Key-Statistics.pdf
Bottom line, the training given to judges is to be significantly pro-feminist view of DV. Which I find quite disturbing.