A submission to the Australian Law Reform Commission’s Family Law System Review
November 2018 | Download full submission
Summary of recommendations
- Reforms should specifically guarantee access to justice for people experiencing financial, geographic, cultural and other forms of disadvantage or exclusion.
- Reforms designed to improve access to family law services must be fully accessible to and tailored to the needs of rural, regional and remote communities. This includes specialist court lists, Family Hubs and expanded FASS services.
- Greater funding should be allocated to judges, court services and community-based legal assistance services in rural, regional and remote areas to ensure that people have access to timely, affordable services.
- There should be more sitting dates for the Federal Circuit Court in rural, regional and remote area to prevent unjust delays.
- Subsidies should be provided to clients with limited resources to travel to attend court or face-to-face family dispute resolution.
- Filing fees should be further reduced or fully waived for self-represented litigants who are in financial hardship and receiving assistance from a community legal centre, particularly for divorce applications.
- Court registries should continue to accept hard-copy application forms and cash payments for filing fees, particularly in rural, regional and remote areas.
- Reforms must be fully costed and must address funding issues affecting the family law system, including chronic underfunding of the Family Court, Legal Aid and community-based legal assistance services.
- The Commission’s final report should consider the impact and efficacy of proposed structural reforms to the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia, currently before the Commonwealth parliament. Reforms should prioritise sophisticated community legal education strategies over the development of additional, static information resources.
- Reforms should prioritise sophisticated community legal education strategies over the development of additional, static information resources.
- Family Law information packages must be developed in consultation with people in regional, rural and remote communities, particularly remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and the Aboriginal-controlled organisations that support them.
- Family law information packages must be available in hard copy. Hard copy packages should be distributed to all community-based legal assistance services and legal aid organisations to deliver to clients, including on outreach.
- Family law systems should accommodate the limits of communications technology, particularly in rural, regional and remote areas.
- Computers should be made available for those with a family law matter to use in the registry, and an administrator should be employed to assist people to use these computers.
- Hard copy forms must be maintained for all family law applications, including for divorce. All courts must guarantee that they will continue to accept hard copy applications.
- Family Hubs should not be established or funded at the expense of existing family law and family support services.
- Family Hubs should co-locate existing, specialist legal and non-legal services and services should be delivered by specialist family law practitioners.
- Family Hubs should be accessible by people in rural, regional and remote communities, including through direct and outreach service delivery.
- Family Hubs should be available to outlying local courts as well as existing Federal Circuit Court registries.
- Family dispute resolution services should be made available in a greater number of rural towns.
- The timeframes for property and financial settlements for separating or divorcing spouses should be extended.
- Specialist Indigenous, family violence and small property claims lists should operate in or be expanded to regional, rural and remote areas.
- The federal government should prohibit medically unnecessary procedures on intersex children until they are old enough or mature enough to make an informed decision for themselves.
- The federal government should prohibit the sterilisation of children, except where there is a serious threat to life or health, and the sterilisation of adults with a disability in the absence of their fully informed and free consent.
- National guidelines should be enacted, in consultation with medical experts, people with disability, intersex people, and their peak bodies, to ensure a human rights-based approach is taken in decision-making for any medical treatment relating to sterilisation of children with disability or relating to intersex medical procedures.
- Medically necessary sterilisations and intersex procedures should be authorised by the Family Court.