False Reporting
One Rule for Politicians, another rule for Separated Fathers
Extract: Unless you have been living under a rock, you would be well acquainted with the saga of Australian Labor MP Craig Thomson, whom Fair Work Australia has recently found to have misused his Union credit cards to pay for the services of prostitutes, amongst other misuses of union funds.
In the Australian legal system, people are supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, however the evidence against Mr Thomson is by most standards overwhelming. Fair Work Australia has found a striking coincidence between the use of the credit cards in Mr Thomson’s possession, at least one signature on the brothel credit card dockets, phone calls between Mr Thomson and the brothel, and a number of other highly suspect pieces of evidence that in my opinion would be highly unlikely to lead to any other conclusion, other than that Mr Thomson himself actively sought and paid for these services, with union funds.
According to Prime Minister Julia Gillard, politicians SHOULD HAVE a presumption of innocence, even if the facts of their guilt are overwhelming. As such she has steadfastly defended Mr Thomson, claiming that she thought he was innocent and that she would not expel him from the party. In response to media pressure and the prevailing community belief that the evidence stands on its own, she finally relented and expelled him from the Labor party, while still claiming he was innocent, and still accepting his vote in Parliament. The thinking behind this is obvious, as Gillard is acting in her own self interest, damn the ethics at play. But any way you play it, Mr Thomson has received remarkable leniency in this sorry saga, even having his legal fees in defence of these allegations paid for by the Labor party.
However, as many Australian fathers would be well aware by now, Julia Gillard is quite selective as to how she applies the principle of a presumption of innocence.
As in abundantly clear from Gillard’s recent Family Violence amendments to the Family Law act, she believes that even though Craig Thomson should be presumed innocent, should keep his job and should receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in free legal funds to fight his case in Court , separated fathers however do not get such privileges, and in fact should be considered the ‘HAVE NOTS’ in application of the principle of a presumption of innocence.
Not only do separated fathers lose their house, the majority of their life insurance and all other assets, but in most cases, as presumably intended by these amendments, they lose meaningful contact with their children, even if they are completely innocent of any wrongdoing. They are also in many cases prevented from accessing Legal Aid, and certainly never get their legal fees paid for by an organisation for apparently no reason.
Read the full article on Ezine4males.com
DIVORCE LAWS: Family Court loathed for the vast harm it does
The Americans have a well-known saying for politicians, “It’s the economy, stupid!” — meaning that what matters most for people are economic issues. It’s false.
What matters most to people, and most affects their well-being, are close relationships, and above all family relationships. These are areas where politicians and bureaucrats can do only limited good but almost limitless harm, and huge harm is being done.
Here are some facts regarding Australia today. If there’s a marriage or relationship break-up involving children, and custody or access is in dispute, the parties must submit to an inquisition by Family Court social-workers or the latters’ pet psychologists regarding their past behaviour towards and in the presence of the children.
A major purpose of the exercise is to identify “family violence” by the male, with this being defined as any behaviour “actual or threatened” which causes any member of the family “to fear for, or reasonably to be apprehensive about, his or her personal well-being or safety”.
The term “well-being” is infinitely elastic, and meant to be, as are the other catch-all Family Court categories of “family violence”, such as “psychological violence/abuse”, “emotional violence/abuse”, and “controlling behaviours”.
What about the men? White Ribbon, men and violence
What about the men? White Ribbon, men and violence: A response to Dr Michael Flood by Men’s Health Australia
The White Ribbon Foundation is an organisation that works to prevent male violence towards women – a goal that is extremely worthy and worth supporting. The White Ribbon website states that “all forms of violence are unacceptable,” however in 2009 the organisation issued a document to it’s male Ambassadors which used erroneous ‘facts and statistics’ to downplay, diminish and report incorrectly about male victims of violence. These Ambassadors use federal government funding to take the White Ribbon message into regional, rural and remote communities. These significant errors could have led the Ambassadors, and through them the general public via federal funding, to be misled about the nature and dynamics of interpersonal violence in Australia.
Parental Alienation Epidemic in Australian Family Law Courts, Expert finds
Editor Note: The premise that the Julia Gillard-lead Labor Government relied upon to substantially alter the 2006 Family Law (Shared Parental Responsibility) act, and in the process remove penalties against Perjury and Knowingly False Allegations, as well as removing the Friendly Parent provision (otherwise known as the Anti-Parental Alienation provision), was the insistence, as claimed by various womens’ rights zealouts like Michael Flood and Jen McIntosh, that False Allegations and Parental Alienation were effectively a Myth, and did not occur at all (or only seldomly occurred) in any Australian Family Law proceedings.
This naive, incorrect and in many regards disingenuous claim has been slammed by many family law professionals, including Judges and Magistrates, who claim that the bulk of the work of all jurisdictions dealing with family law proceedings today are spent on just that, dealing with False Allegations, relating to Domestic Abuse and Child Sexual Abuse, and attempting to serve the best interests of children who have been significantly alienated from their parent, due to the ulterior motives of the other parent.
Mum’s hate campaign against stepmother in custody battle at Family Court
A MOTHER has lost custody of her two young daughters after she conducted an “obsessive” campaign against their new stepmother.
Family Court judge Justice Peter Young said he suspected it was the mother, 30, who painted “bitch” on the woman’s house and wrote “die dad haters” on her own car in felt-tipped pen and then sought to blame the stepmother, 28.
The judge said the sisters, aged 10 and seven, would be better off living with their father, 29, and his new wife, because their mother “would not likely change”.
He ordered an end to the shared custody which had been going on for more than five years and said the two girls should live full-time with their father.
“I find that he is capable of a greater level of responsive behaviour and conduct than is the mother and that is one of the considerations I have evaluated,” Justice Young said.Caught between warring parents, the sisters had to “tiptoe” around both households for fear of upsetting anyone.
Shared care dead as mother stands firm on no access
A QUEENSLAND father has been banned from having any contact with his five-year-old daughter until she reaches 18 after the Family Court accepted that the child’s mother would “destroy” the relationship rather than agree to shared care.
In a decision that suggests the “shared care” law introduced by the Howard government was effectively dead, a full bench of the Family Court said “the mother would ignore any order for contact” and, as a result, it was pointless to order her to co-operate.
Shared care of children after divorce was a policy goal of the previous government, but the law is now being rolled back, with key changes to the Family Law Act (1975) passing through the Senate this week.
Under the old law, mothers were sent to prison or lost custody of children when they refused to allow them to have contact with their father. While this is still possible, the full bench of the court has now said that in some cases there is nothing it can do.
The full bench ruled on the matter after a father, known as Mr Summerby, appealed against a 90-page judgment by a Brisbane federal magistrate, Keith Wilson, which effectively ended his relationship with his daughter.
Mr Wilson agreed that the loss of the girl’s relationship with her father “would be distressful in the short term and may also be emotionally damaging to her in the long term”.
Labor’s Male-Hate anti-Family Law amendments become LAW
Knowingly false allegations of child abuse will now become a legitimate reason to deny children any contact with their father in the event of separation, under controversial new laws passed by parliament today.
The government has made changes to family laws compelling family law courts to consider all allegations of family violence, even irrational, malicious and knowingly dishonest allegations.
The law rolls back reforms made under the Howard government that encouraged shared parenting responsibilities.
The legislation also aims to change the definition of family violence and abuse under the act to include a host of alleged behaviours, that are now to be determined by what the alleged victim claims to have feared, rather than what occurred, was witnessed or can be proven.
It will allow the court to deny contact, in most cases with the children’s father, based on nothing more than a claim that the mother “fears” abuse, whether or not there is any history of abuse, or whether any threatening behaviour occurred or is likely to occur.
Michael Flood – when equality becomes the new enemy of Feminism
Well known for unethical behaviour
Editor: I just want to preface this excellent article with our own experience with Michael Flood. He has on a previous occasion mis-represented himself as a separated father in order to unethically and fraudulently gain access to our resources that we had struggled to make available for the benefit of distressed fathers.
He then proceeded to misuse these facilities and send out offensive letters in the name of Fathers4Equality to every member of the Australian federal parliament, in an effort to discredit and undermine our efforts and reputation.
We conclusively tracked down this misuse of our facilities to Michael Flood, at his campus office at James Cook University. We then contacted him and confronted him with this misuse of such important resources for separated and distressed fathers.
He initially denied and refuted his involvement in these bizarre actions, but in the face of overwhelming evidence he finally accepted that it was his actions, and his alone, and he apologized for these unethical acts.
It actually beggars belief that this man is supposed to be an impartial professional researcher in this very important field of gender equality, and yet he has behaved in a way more akin to a professional fraudster.
It goes without saying that anything you hear or read from Michael Flood should be seriously questioned, if his history of deception and fraud is anything to go by.
Placing Children in harms way: Labor’s Family Law Fiasco
Most people by now would have heard the commonly-peddled Julia Gillard-Labor party claim that Australia’s current Child Custody family laws are in urgent need of amendment in order to protect vulnerable children from child abuse.
“Putting children’s safety first” is one of numerous newspaper headlines blindly towing this line, resulting in a growing perception that the existing 2006 Shared Parental Responsibility laws had openned the floodgates to rampant child abuse, in the guise of Shared Parenting arrangements.
According to one prominent Green, child abuse is “gendered”, and presumably as a result children should be denied contact with men, especially separated fathers, as a matter of policy. The fact that these same Greens support Gay (male) adoption makes one wonder how a political party that wants to be taken seriously can bring itself to support two completely incompatible policies when it comes to the safety of children.
The federal Attorney General, Robert McClelland, has himself been relentless in his portrayal of the 2006 Shared Parenting amendments as being detrimental to women, and he has vowed to change these laws in order to protect “women and children” from fathers.
Strangely, McClelland has vowed to do this by removing the penalties for false allegations and perjury in the Family Court, and by effectively dismantling measures designed to encourage co-operation between divorcing parents.
Senate Committee divided over shared parenting rollback
Press Release for immediate release: Senate Committee divided over shared parenting rollback
The Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee yesterday approved changes to family law legislation that will remove even more fathers from their children’s lives.
The Committee divided down party lines. Coalition members submitted a minority report rejecting the changes, but the Labor controlled committee agreed with the much broader definition of domestic violence, the removal of penalties for knowingly making false allegations and the requirement for parents to be supportive of each other’s role in their children’s lives, as contained in the Attorney General’s new Family Law Amendment (Family violence) Bill 2010. The Greens went further, suggesting the removal of shared parental responsibility provisions, previously known as ‘guardianship’ arrangements, illustrating their total disregard for fathers and our traditional family structure.
