Australia’s Shared Parenting laws finding favour in Britain
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FIERCE debate over the success and safety of Australia’s shared parenting laws has been exported to Britain.
Australian-based fathers groups, which are advising British counterparts, yesterday welcomed public comments from Britain’s Minister for Children and Families Tim Loughton that his government was considering “legislative and non-legislative” means to promote shared parenting as part of a broad family law shake-up.
Mr Loughton also distanced himself from the recommendations of a government-commissioned review of family law that cited problems with the Howard government’s 2006 reforms to argue against shared parenting legislation. Lone Fathers Association of Australia president Barry Williams backed the British government stance, which goes against the key recommendation of the Family Justice Review chaired by businessman David Norgrove.
In his final report published late last year, Mr Norgrove said “thorough and detailed evidence from Australia showed the damaging consequences for many children” when courts compelled them to spend equal time with both parents.
This report was however immediately branded by many in family law, including the legal profession, as misleading, inaccurate, and  completely out-of-step with the overwhelming success and favour of Australia’s Shared Parenting legislation.
Critics have labelled  Mr Norgrove review as a fundamental failure,  given that it did not even demonstrate the most basic understanding of the very legislation it was condemning.
Fathers groups demanded the report be thrown into the dustbin, given the volumes of assumptions and innuendo it contained. Many have complained that Mr Norgrove completely ignored the Australian government’s own seminal review of  the shared parenting legislation, which interviewed almost 30,000 parents to have gone to Court under the new legislation, and found that it did not result in any increased risk of child abuse. In fact, the data seemed to indicate quite the opposite.
Elspeth McInnes, a policy adviser to the National Council of Single Mothers and their Children, said the direction of the British debate was “concerning” and based more on ideology that children had rights to both parents, rather than the primary focus which should be the protection of women and children from abuse.
“There is lot of evidence in the UK that the laws as they currently stand are not able to protect children from ongoing exposure to abusive parents,” Dr McInnes said. “If you have flaws in that system before you introduce shared parenting, introducing shared parenting is like pouring fuel on the flames.
“The system does not deal well with violence and abuse as it currently stands, either here in Australia or in the UK.
“The Gillard government last year introduced further changes to the law following criticisms that in instances of family violence, the Howard government’s Shared Parental Responsibility Act gave insufficient weight to child safety against the rights of parents, particularly fathers.
Among a series of recommendations for sweeping changes to British family law, Mr Norgrove warned against introducing legislation in Britain that implied a parental right to “substantially shared or equal time” with their children.”Drawing on international and other evidence, we opposed legislation to encourage ‘shared parenting,’ ” he said.
The final report included a detailed critique of Australia’s shared parenting laws by Melbourne Law School associate professor Helen Rhoades that cited the complexity of the laws and differing interpretations by the courts. However when seeking to explain how the current British laws were any less complex, or whether complexity itself should be the barometer of the success of the legislation,  Ms Rhoades provided no commentary.
Mr Loughton last week told London’s Daily Telegraph his government “must do everything we can to improve the system so that it gives children the best chance of growing up under the guidance of two loving parents”.
Many father’s groups have warned the government to start putting children’s rights ahead of the rights of divorced mothers, if they want to protect against the causes of the UK riots last year, which were roundly seen as being committed by children who were effectivively denied a relationship with their fathers, in large measure by a family law system that promoted sole maternal custody at any expense.
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Nice reply Gary, Very insightful.Yes your right about my punctuation problem, im smiling in a fun way at your frustration.
, make sure you or your kids don’t stand in that line ok, keep them safe and educated about the mind bending substances that they’re all going to investigate at some point, like we all do. build them up sincerely and simply from your heart all the time, If we feel ok, we think ok, if we think ok ,we feel ok, give them the keys to the esteem they need. Sorry im streaming again full stop. comma,new sentence.
How’s that, a full stop. Should that “hows that” bit, have had talking marks around it, like that? I hope I didn’t come across misogynistic. I didn’t mean to. I don’t think I am. I just like things to be fair for everyone, and i don’t like any kind of bullies. And i think your right about fighting the law with the law, as opposed to morality emotional attack like i tend to do.
To me the three main family destroying government departments are the Family court, DHS, and the Mental Health department along with psychiatry, their the guys who feed off the scraps created by the Family court,and DHS, including refuges, just be careful about Mental Health and psychiatry because they’re waiting in the wings. And they’ve got over 300 diagnosis, ready to inflict and incarcerate your kids with, especially in the next DSM coming out in 2013. ALMOST all the social ills to which man is
heir have been laid at the door of the
broken home, including juvenile delinquency,
drug addiction, and mental disease. Anywhere from 35 to 40 percent of those are from broken homes, so basically 4 out of 10 will be captured by mental health at some point, so we fathers of conflict marriages need to keep our eyes wide open, and our kids away from alcohol and then drugs, one buries one magnifies.
And remember psychiatry is telling/selling us every day in the media that 45% of adult Australians will experience a mental illness at some stage in their lives, they’re not saying that at some stage we will have an emotional psychological disturbance, like we all do at some stage, but an illness or a disease, I mean remember they’ve got three industries to support, psychiatry, mental health, and the drug companies, so that means either you Gary, or me is mad, or is gonna be mad , I’m not putting my hand up are you
What we’ve got to look forward to.
P<O<S<R<O<P<D<D
Thats,"post,& ongoing,stress,related,& oppressive,psychotropic,drug, disorder."
And
A<G<W<W<D<A<A<I
"A government who wont do anything about it." or a government with its hand in the dirty drug money till.
Also think about this, a psychiatrist has more power than any judge in the land, he or she can drug the crap out of the judges troubled family,especially if the judge has anyone they've tagged and incarcerated, or might have concerns about their family member becoming one of their clients (victims).
So keep your eye on the ball.
Thanks for your response i loved it, your a cool dude mate, have a good week, the sun shines, we smile.
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Nice article, but until the balance of employed in the family court is balanced in men and women nothing is going to change. And we are all asking women to help, not saying their all bad, but a balance is needed, both in numbers and spirit. I remember the counseling section of the family court having 29 counselors when i was there, 27 were women and two were men, DHS is probably worse in percentages,anyway the first two i saw were full on feminized, to the point that they never even said, oh that was no good to anything i said, and then what about your wife, they just auto went but what about you wife, your wife this and that, the two blokes were puppets, one was old old and antiquated, and the other was camp, not anti nothing, but unaffected in any way considering might be a better idea, anyway the point is that any care for families in any government run organization dealing with families, should offer the equal sex amount of counseling or workers in numbers and choice for the person or people effected and needing them, to keep the energy of balance in the organization as a whole. Id hate to imagine the amount of women working in the family court or DHS compared to men, I think if these balances are corrected we might stand a chance of having balanced outcomes to our family problems in society that we need to appeal to for help. Until that happens men are going down. I eventually got the head counselor after having to keep asking for another, and she was really balanced, she took one look at my ex and the two counselors she turned up with one like a wharfie or a brickies laborer, built like a brick toilet, and looking like a bloke, the other all screwed up in the face and as angry as anyone can look, and saw the insecurity and vulnerability of my ex, and said oh john!! as soon as she said that with the voice she said it with, I knew she was normal,balanced, then i could just be me. But unfortunately she was only one person and they don’t report what the counselor says, which is another weird thing they do, anyway she left the family court weeks or months later in disgust, I was told by someone high up there id built a re pall with, and is in private practice now. So there ya go, change the numbers, change the outcomes.
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gary kennedy Reply:
January 16th, 2012 at 5:20 pm
john, john, john. I like your take and the info you convey in your response to the article, but you’ve got to help me out.
The stream of consciousness thing is very difficult to read and apparently difficult for you to edit.
Please separate your ideas by spacing them as sentences or short paragraphs. That way I can quickly see relationships between ideas without having to search for related ones in the page’s mass of words.
I know, I know it seems like I’m being a picky prick, but help us see your good information.
My quibbling aside, I just love your image of the “counsellors” and the characterization of “public service”(?) misogyny. It’s brilliant and devastating because it clearly is not there to do what it pretends. Just another highly paid dump for male haters.
So, I wonder if we’ve had enough of asking for help yet?
Personally, I don’t want help from anyone, anyone who has ever supported male rape, whether actively or passively as a good Canadian or a good Aussie or a good Brit—-”Good Germans” all.
Nowadays, I believe that all this “reasonableness” is just a defence mechanism for avoiding the issue of being raped by the legislators of our respective countries. And I do mean raped. I’ve counselled many women and men who have been raped,i.e., object penetration of orifices.
Guess what so many say about the experience when they are finally able to talk about it. The body heals. The integrity of self takes much, much longer. I suspect the object is not as the feminists assure us, sexual pleasure or fulfillment. They say it’s about power, implying political power, in the specific case over an individual. Nonsense! It’s really about devastating the integrity of the psyche and instilling deep somatic insecurity.
It stands to reason, therefore, that rape can also be performed without physical penetration. This, I say, is the point of stealing our children and making us pay for the exercise – instilling a deep, somatic insecurity from which it is very difficult to recover, given the constant assault of financial insecurity.
Throughout history, stealing children, stealing property, stealing rights have been acts of war. No one, except Chamberlain, has responded to acts of war by appeasement. In fact it has entered history as the fool’s way.
I’m not making a personal accusation, god knows I’m as guilty as any man alive today of supporting equal “rights” for my mother, my sisters, my girl friends-my wife. Do you know we were doing it before the “feminists” came on the scene. In high school in the 70′s, we didn’t think of girls the way our father’s generation did because we interacted with girls incessantly, in class, in the halls, in sports, in the stands at cafes on the streets, at parties.
Feminism only had to change the minds of corrupt legislators, something which could not have been done without our approval and support. Feminazis saw opportunity in our acquiescence. They saw money. We had no inkling of the agenda.
Now we’ve taken this shit for more than 30 years. In that time we have seen the rise of a globalized economy, good “old fashioned” male jobs outsourced in each of our western economies. Women rightly compete for those jobs which they can do. Feminists don’t say keep and increase the jobs here so that men and women can work. No. They play the so called Patriarchy’s handmaiden and actually help cover the destruction of our economies so that “men” will be men no more. Low wage “female” jobs for all, except those of us who pass the bar.
Don’t beg for help from such people and their toadies, for it will never come.
Stand up for your Common Law Constitution’s protection of your rights. You, yes you will offer women rights and liberty under the protection of your Great Common Law Constitution where they can only suggest privileges given by corrupt and easily bought legislators.
Which would you rather? Inalienable rights, guaranteed by all or the favour of corrupt legislators
Go the the British Constitution Group’s web page. Familiarize yourself with the Magna Carta and the other documents of a great Constitution.Think about, protect and project rights, inalienable rights to all and leave this special interest pleading once and for all.
Larry Hannigan’s home page is a good place to start.
Lysander Spooner’s book, Essay on Trial by Jury will change your politics.
There is no leadership, never was, in feminist ideology. They never had anything to offer. We had already agreed with rights for women in the seventies. We wanted to see it done, and never saw the dishonesty in their leadership.
Now, our daughters will be able to sell their families to the legislators through the ages old common law crime of enticement, this time by the state which advertises how much of a man’s income the state will guarantee them; through indoctrination in government sponsored safe houses(do you know how much they are paid to run such centres?) where children are hidden to establish custody and learn the kind of nonsense that judges will respond to; through police forces SOP of breaking men’s heads, cuffing us and removing us to jail, without charge, on the mere allegation of dispute at the scene of a domestic call. Enticement, Indoctrination, Protection.
All so stupidly because stupid legislators want to congratulate themselves on how much money they save in welfare payments. (See Dr. Baskerville on this subject. Sickening)
From which they pay themselves very handsomely. Oh and the golden pensions for life, of course.
Its long past time we put our “big boy” pants on.
Real leadership will see re-establishing the supremacy of Common Law in our jurisdictions; re-establishing our 1200 year old Common Law Constitution, which still beats Canada, America and any other legislative nonsense, handsdown.
Trial by Jury: Absolutely necessary to democracy.
Quarterly referendum dates: Vital to policing the day to day work of legislators.
Equal votes: Lottery is the trick of English aristocracy to conquer the homelands by division, pitting the people against one another in fruitless and foolish argument. Tradition hardly makes it work or right.
And so I flip my good bow drawing fingers to the Michael Floods of this world.
Please don’t take this rant you inspired personally. It’s merely a riff on something you said. Thank you.
Enticed into prostitution, trafficking in children? Does that sound like leadership, worthy of historical mention?
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