The Family Law and Child Support systems need to be reformed

An article on Stan Korosi’s website at http://dialogueingrowth.com.au/parental-alienation-false-allegations/
has reminded us that some Australian politicians do actually care about the disastrous social policies, family law legislation, child support inequities and the draconian measures applied to domestic violence legislation that is causing a major rift between family members and their children.
As Stan Korosi points out, Senator John Madigan spoke about the misuse of Domestic and Family violence orders based on false allegations in order to deny the child(ren) contact with their other parent. He identified the reason for the increase in false allegations as directly related to the removal of the “good parent” provisions in the Family Law Act – a provision to ensure each parent was willing “to facilitate a relationship with the other parent”. The Labour Party removed this section of the act in order to prioritise children’s safety over them having a relationship with both parents.

Senator Madigan as reported by Stan Korosi concludes that “This, together with the failure to investigate parenting failure in the context of no-fault divorce, the effective suspension of rules of evidence that allow the use of children’s hearsay evidence and a definition of family violence that now means “just about anything” where “Parental Alienation becomes a successful tactic”.

He also continued to “quote some very disturbing statistics. According to surveys of Queensland magistrates, 74% believe that some intervention and family violence orders are used to deny contact between a parent and child, rather than for the purpose intended-the protection of a vulnerable person from family violence or other forms of violence and abuse.
The situation in New South Wales is even worse with 90% of surveyed magistrates believing the same as the 74% of Queensland magistrates. It would seem that a majority of surveyed judges might agree that the system that they swore to uphold has been suborned as a legally abusive tool in the hands of alienating parents.

Senator Madigan’s address is here on UTube: The Family Court must be fixed:

Published on Mar 25, 2014

In this Senate speech on March 25 2014, John outlines how the current Family Court system is both blatantly unfair and negligent. John says the court is the flashpoint for the breakdown in Australian family life – and it’s not working.

Queensland Senator George Christensen also spoke passionately on the same subject in March 2014.
Stan Korosi also quotes from Senator Christensen’s speech …..

“… none were more reckless, more damaging to Australian families that the Family Law, family violence amendment bill 2011. That law redefined family violence to mean just about anything and encouraged parents to make fraudulent claims to remove other parents from their families”.

The Senators were not alone in their criticism of the Family law legislation. They both referred to the comments of retiring Family Court Judge David Collier who was quoted in the Sydney Morning Herald on 6 July 2013 to say,

“…unprecedented hostility was infiltrating the Family Court with a willingness by parents to use their children to damage one another. Allegations of child sexual abuse are being increasingly invented by mothers to stop fathers from seeing their children”. He then goes on to say ” this “a horrible weapon…the continued use of false claims is undoubtedly fueling the crisis in our Family Law system”.
Stan Korosi came to our attention recently as a speaker at the newly announced Symposium on Parental Alienation to be held in Adelaide on 14 September 2017.

Stan Korosi is a professional counsellor and psychotherapist who specialises in high conflict relationships, ruptured bonds, parent-child affiliation, parental alienation and parent-child reunification.
Stan has a Masters degree in counselling and extensive training in existential psychotherapy, emotion focused individual and couples therapy.
He has been trained in the USA in parental alienation theory, practice and interventions.
Stan is also a member of the international Parental Alienation Study Group (PASG). An international, not-for-profit organisation, the PASG has approximately 240 mental health and legal professional members across 32 countries.
Stan is also the Editor-in-Chef of the PASG international newsletter ‘Parental Alienation International’. He is also a founding director of Parental Alienation Australia and New Zealand.
He decided to specialise in family ruptures and specifically parental alienation after his own experience of being an alienated parent. He has both professional and personal experience of this form of child abuse, which is yet to be fully recognised in Australia, although family law is becoming more and more familiar with it.
The relationship between parents and children can rupture for reasons other than parental alienation and there is a spectrum of parent-child affiliation in which parental alienation is located at an extreme and child-abusive end of the spectrum.
Stan’s focus is upon working with excluded and alienated parents to reunite them and their children and where this is not possible working with alienated parents to ‘let go’ by ‘saying goodbye to say hello’. He also counsels and coaches parents through the family law legal process and in engaging with family consultants in order to obtain recommendations in favour of their children and their children’s relationship with them.
Stan works both within the Australian family law system and outside of it, collaborating with other professionals for the best outcomes.
He is interested in educating the general public, mental health clinicians, forensic and legal practitioners regarding interventions for parental alienation and in developing and promoting research on the causes, evaluation of, and interventions for, parental alienation.
Stan Korosi – M.Counselling. Human Services (Latrobe Univ), MACA, Clin. PACFA, ARCAP Reg., Family Law Counsellor (ACA).
http://dialogueingrowth.com.au/about-2/about/