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    Quarterly Essay 17: ‘Kangaroo Court’: Family Law in Australia
    Quarterly Essay 17: ‘Kangaroo Court’: Family Law in Australia
    Quarterly Essay 17: ‘Kangaroo Court’: Family Law in Australia
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    Quarterly Essay 17: ‘Kangaroo Court’: Family Law in Australia

    By John Hirst

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    The Family Court was a progressive reform of the 1970s. Now it is perhaps the most hated institution in Australia. In 'Kangaroo Court', John Hirst investigates what went wrong.

    This is a measured yet unsparing appraisal which interleaves individual cases with compelling legal and moral argument. Hirst takes us deep into the workings of the Court and the domestic apocalypses it sees every day.

    He explores the Court's fervour to uphold the best interests of the child no matter what and traces its chilling consequence: a court where malicious allegations regularly go unpunished. He notes the Court's enormous power over individual lives, as well as its self-proclaimed status as a 'caring court', and wonders at its ability to overlook the defiance of its own authority. In closing, he considers how to reform an institution that has bred antagonism and extremism and too often entrenched paranoia and despair. Lucid and urgent, 'Kangaroo Court' is a cautionary tale about the perils of high-mindedness when it comes to dealing with the breakdown of families.

    ‘When Family Court judges talk piously of the 'caring court', I wish they could hear the roar of pain that their piety has caused.’ —John Hirst, ‘Kangaroo Court’

    ‘An Emile Zola-style pamphlet of accusation against our family law system which shatters the court’s last remaining intellectual pretensions to self-defence.’ —Herald Sun

    John Hirst is a widely respected historian and social commentator. A former reader in history at La Trobe University, he is a member of the Film Australia board and the National Museum council. He is the author of numerous books, including The Australians: Insiders and Outsiders on the National Character since 1770, Freedom on the Fatal Shore: Australia’s First Colony, Sense and Nonsense in Australian History, The Shortest History of Europe and Australian History in 7 Questions.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBlack Inc. Books
    Release dateMar 1, 2005
    ISBN9781921825163
    Quarterly Essay 17: ‘Kangaroo Court’: Family Law in Australia
    Author

    John Hirst

    John Hirst was a member of the History Department at La Trobe University from 1968 to 2007. He has written many books on Australian history, including Convict Society and Its Enemies, The Strange Birth of Colonial Democracy, The Sentimental Nation, Sense and Nonsense in Australian History and The Shortest History of Europe.

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      Quarterly Essay 17 - John Hirst

      quarterlyessay19relaxedcomfortable_cover

      Quarterly Essay

      Quarterly Essay is published four times a year by Black Inc., an imprint of Schwartz Publishing Pty Ltd

      Publisher: Morry Schwartz

      ISBN 186 395 3418

      ISSN 1832-0953

      Subscriptions (4 issues): $49 a year within Australia incl. GST (Institutional subs. $59). Outside Australia $79. Payment may be made by Mastercard,Visa or Bankcard, or by cheque made out to Schwartz Publishing. Payment includes postage and handling.

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      Black Inc.

      Level 5, 289 Flinders Lane

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      Printer: Griffin Press

      CONTENTS

      Introduction John Hirst

      KANGAROO COURT

      Family Law in Australia

      John Hirst

      CORRESPONDENCE

      Paul Kelly, Paul Bongiorno, Mungo MacCallum, Natasha Cica, Alex Miller, Raimond Gaita

      Contributors

      INTRODUCTION

      Until recently I knew only as much or as little about the Family Court as anyone who follows current affairs. Two or three years ago I was sufficiently disturbed by what I was learning to open a newspaper cuttings file: this signals that the subject may be one on which I write someday. Last year, suddenly, I was in the Family Court. I was not a principal in the case; I was appointed by the Court to supervise Steve, a student of mine, when he saw his children. His wife claimed he was a danger to them. My job was to watch him closely and to end the access and remove the children if danger loomed.

      The visits lasted two hours on a Saturday morning and took place at an outer suburban McDonald’s. Within half an hour of our first visit, I knew that my responsibilities would be light. Steve played exuberantly and imaginatively with his boys, who were plainly delighted to be with him. He wiped noses, changed nappies and settled disputes with a practised hand.

      For six months I lived close to a man who had the common experience in divorce of being brought under suspicion and having to prove himself innocent. The day Steve was told of his wife’s accusations was the day I determined that I must write about this Court. I have now studied the Court intensively and this essay is the outcome. I am grateful to Black Inc. for allowing it to be part of their Quarterly Essay series.

      The system I describe here, or at least some part of it, may soon be modified. After the most recent parliamentary review of the Family Court, the Commonwealth government has decided to implement what it hopes will be significant changes. There have been earlier attempts to change the Family Court, which the Court has ignored or frustrated. The account that I offer of how this occurred should assist those attempting the latest reform. I will assess the government’s reform plans at the end of the essay.

      For the last fifteen years the Court has been symbolised by its chief justice, Alastair Nicholson, who retired in 2004. He was highly ambitious for his Court, ferocious in its defence and scathing of its critics. Much of the essay is an argument with him. He was appointed by the Hawke Labor government, but Labor as well as Coalition MPs became highly critical of him. He in turn did not hide his contempt for the politicians. He has been replaced as chief justice by Diana Bryant who is much quieter and conciliatory. It is too early to say whether she will change the outlook and practice of the Court.

      The Family Law Act prohibits the discussion of its cases in a way that would reveal the identity of the people concerned. The names of the people I have interviewed have accordingly been changed. I am very grateful to Paul Walton, Graham Sweetland and Julian Aston who have allowed me to make public their experiences and their views of the Court.

      The essay has benefited from the critical reading of Robert Manne and George Winterton. Jeremy Sammut has been more than a research assistant; he has been a keen collaborator. My thanks to them.

      John Hirst

      "KANGAROO

      COURT"

      Family Law

      in Australia

      John Hirst

      I am writing to voice my disgust as to my treatment by your Kangaroo Court known as the Family Court. – Submission no. 68 to the 1992 Select Committee on the Family Law

      THE CARING COURT

      One of the gravest failings of the Family Court derives from the noble intentions of its founders.

      The Family Law Act of 1975 which established the Court was a progressive social reform of the Whitlam Labor government. It was not an exclusively government measure; members on both sides were allowed a free vote and Liberals had been among those working for divorce law reform. The Act removed fault as a ground for divorce and replaced it with irretrievable breakdown, to be indicated by a one-year separation. The aim was to allow couples to part without the trauma and contrivance of one partner proving fault against the other. Marriages would be buried decently and humanely. The business of dividing property, arranging maintenance and determining custody of children would remain, but these were to be settled in a simple, flexible and inexpensive way. Litigation was to be discouraged and the Court was to be staffed by social workers and counsellors as well as judges. It was to be a court of an entirely new sort, a caring court or a helping court.

      If proceedings were to be simple, flexible and cheap, why, say the wits, were lawyers put in charge of them? Proceedings quickly became complex, rule-bound and expensive – which was not entirely the fault of the lawyers because property settlements and custody cases can be very complex. But though the caring court looked more and more like an ordinary court, it hesitated to act like an ordinary court when its orders were disobeyed.

      The disobeying of a court order is known as contempt of court and is the offence that threatens the foundations of our society. We are governed by the rule of law and once courts have settled the law, it has to be obeyed by governments and citizens alike. To ensure that their orders are obeyed, courts have large, discretionary powers to fine and imprison those who defy them. Though it was to be a court of a new sort, the Family Court had been equipped with these powers.

      Within months of the Court opening, a Family Court judge used these powers to deal with a man who had defied a court order. His offence was indeed gross. His former wife had custody of their children and since he had been violent towards her, he had been put under a restraining order.

      One day he burst into her house unannounced, waving a gun, and threatened to kill his son if he did not come with him. The judge sent him to prison for twenty-eight days. From his prison cell, he appealed to the Full Family Court to release him.

      The Full Court under the leadership of its first chief, Elizabeth Evatt,was embarrassed at their new caring court acting in this crude, old-fashioned way. It immediately set down for itself rules to limit the powers it had been given to punish contempt. An offender had to be properly tried for the contempt, and imprisonment was to be used only as a last resort; counselling, fines and recognisances should be considered first. In the case before them, the appeal judges were disturbed at the trial judge opting immediately for imprisonment, which seemed the more unnecessary since the offender was to face charges in a criminal court, which could well result in a gaol sentence. They released the man from gaol. (The trial judge had been well aware that the offender was facing criminal charges; he reasoned that since the man was still at large he needed to be taught a lesson immediately so that his former wife might feel safe.)

      However, the Court quickly became much more hard-headed, as it regularly had to deal with cases of men abducting children from their mothers. The offenders were given gaol sentences. The Court declared that though it was a helping court, its orders had to be obeyed. Others who may contemplate disobedience of the Court need to know that calculated and grave contempt of its orders will not be tolerated.

      One abduction case, G and G (1981), was of great significance. A father had abducted his son from the mother and lived with him for four years before they were discovered. The man was sent to gaol for two and a half years for defying the Court’s orders. His offence was that he had isolated his son from his mother, but was the Court now going to damage the boy further by depriving him of his father, with whom he got on well? The judge gave the matter earnest consideration because judges are charged under the Family Law Act to give paramount consideration to the welfare of the child. The judge decided that in a contempt matter the welfare of the child is not the paramount consideration, though it is a matter that must be considered. This approach was upheld by the Full Court when the father appealed against his imprisonment. Chief Judge Evatt, conceding that the imprisonment of the father may cause suffering to the child, nevertheless said: If no punishment is imposed, or if lenience is shown, the court’s power to protect not only the individual child concerned, but also many other children, may be diminished.

      These hard-headed pronouncements were all made in cases where fathers did not have custody of their children and had taken matters into their own hands. When the Court came to consider breaches of orders by custodial parents (chiefly mothers), it returned to soft-headedness. The typical case was where a mother contrived to deny a father access to his children, even though he had court orders allowing access (usually it is for every second weekend and half the school holidays). In considering its response to such breaches, the Court declared that the paramount interests of this particular child must prevail. Since the Court could scarcely fine or imprison a custodial mother without having some effect on the child, these options were effectively abandoned. So the caring court re-emerged.

      The Court was not impelled to this decision by the Family Law Act, which gave untrammelled power to punish for contempt, and in adopting it the Court ignored its own judgements in the abduction cases. Just as the Court had there imagined, leniency had disastrous consequences for children. Since access orders were defied with impunity, thousands of children were kept from their fathers, though the Court had ruled that their best interests required that they see them.

      Mothers contrive to deny access to fathers by being away when the father calls, or claiming that the child is ill or does not want to go, or alleging that the father is mistreating the child – or simply moving to a new location. Mothers frequently have good reason to fear access: violent fathers use the contact to re-open old quarrels, to attack the mother and unsettle the children. The Court allows that the custodial parent can deny access with reasonable excuse. If the father is violent, the mother can ask the Court to vary its order and deny him access. If the Court allows access to continue, the pick-up point will be a supervised contact centre where the man will not see his ex-wife. But mothers are not simply keeping away unsatisfactory fathers; decent fathers are being denied access to their children. Mothers who have nothing more to fear from the Court than a slap on the wrist, can, if they wish, exclude fathers from their children’s lives.

      The Court itself is not in any matter responsible for enforcing its orders. A father who is denied access must bring action in the Court and either bear the costs of a lawyer ($3000 a day minimum) or conduct the case himself. But even if he wins the case, the mother will not suffer a penalty that will deter her. When the next contact visit falls due, she may well behave in exactly the same way. The Court has made clear in its judgements that the custodial parent is not to be the judge of whether contact is beneficial. However, by making the best interests of the particular child the test when enforcement is being considered, the Court has given the custodial parent de facto control over access.

      So the logic of the Family Court is as follows:

      The best interests of the child require that they have contact with both parents.

      However, if the custodial parent is determined to deny access to the other parent, Then the best interests of the child require that the child have contact with only one parent.

      Of course one would prefer that a custodial parent did not have to be coerced into providing access. But if the

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