© Commonwealth of Australia, CC BY 3.0 AU <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/au/deed.en>, via Wikimedia Commons
Liberal-frontbencher and Commonwealth Attorney-General Christian Porter has been under intense scrutiny as allegations about his unsettling behaviour in the halls of the Australian Parliament increase speculation that he may be the name behind recent rape allegations by a junior staffer. In a Government so rife with scandal over the course of its term, these allegations have shone a significant and overdue spotlight on the misogyny festering in the offices of government.
With recent speculations flying about the seamy behaviour of Mr Porter, many people are revisiting his past looking for shady details and nasty statements. And they are finding them, thanks to an alcohol-fueled university career that brings to mind the “boofing” irresponsibility unearthed during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings in the US in 2017. His higher-education glory days have all the hallmarks of privilege that is inherently detached from the reality in which most people are required to live; where vomiting on oneself in public and writing about it in the law school newsletter doesn’t preclude one from career-path to the highest offices in the land.
However, this scandalous attention has overshadowed major changes made by the Morrison Government in recent weeks, as well as comments made by Mr Porter, regarding the decision to merge the Family Court of Australia with the lower, less-specialized Federal Circuit Court of Australia.
The move which has shocked legal experts, family advocates, and indeed members of the judiciary, has been met with praise by Mr Porter.
“Successive governments have been talking about delivering reform of the family courts for decades – the Morrison Government has delivered,” the Attorney-General said.
“This area has been one of the most reviewed in Australia but until now, no government has been able to achieve much-needed reform to focus the work of the courts on the users – those families which are dealing with the end of a relationship and need assistance to finalise their matters so they can move on with their lives.”
Experts are concerned about the lack of specialization that exists with members of the Federal Circuit Court, and many believe that the shortcomings of the Family Court will not be overcome by abolishing the court in its current form.
The first Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia, the Hon, Elizabeth Evatt AC, with 155 other signatories, delivered an open letter to the Attorney-General criticising the change to the courts in November 2019. Chief Justice Evatt later said about the move:
“Merging the Family Court into a generalist court will undermine the integrity and the structural specialisation of the Family Court. The impact of losing this institutional specialisation is not properly understood, and has been downplayed.
She added:
“The increasing number of cases in which issues of family violence and child abuse are raised has led to an even greater need today for family law jurisdiction to be vested exclusively in specialised judges who can give their full attention to the needs of family law clients without being diverted to exercise other unrelated jurisdictions. The current bill undermines this principle, is not in the public interest and should not be enacted.”
Former Chief Justice of the Family Court, the Hon. Alastair Nicholson, who was also a signatory to the open letter to Mr Porter, agreed, noting:
“It is unbelievable that Government would propose the dissolution of a Federal Superior Court in this fashion without the most careful and searching Public Inquiry and without carrying out significant research and without consulting the many experts in this field.”
He went on to criticise the benefits stated by Mr Porter.
“What those proposing this merger do not seem to understand is that family law is complex and nuanced, and it is not to be judged by the output by numbers of cases as if the Courts are sausage machines. Throughput is important, but so is the quality of the decisions made.”
Criticisms also spoke to the further risk of harm to already disenfranchised people. The National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services noted these bills will “… disproportionately impact the most vulnerable including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families who need the most support.”
Pauline Wright, the President of the Law Council of Australia, said:
Australian families and children will have to compete for the resourcing and hearing time with all federal matters—that is, other matters like migration, bankruptcy and those sorts of things that the Federal Circuit Court and the Federal Court deal with. There must be an increase not a decrease in specialisation in family law and violence issues. This is critical for the safety of children and victims of family violence.”
Adding to criticisms of the proposed benefits of the merger, President of the Australian Bar Association (ABA) Matthew Howard said:
“The ABA sees the principal problem with the family law system as being one of chronic under-resourcing and the proposed merger des not address the problems that necessarily flow from such under-resourcing.”
This unpopular move may see families forced into confusing and untested circumstances and in practice it may prove more difficult to maintain the already failing standards of the Family Law Act.
However, Mr Porter has long maintained his position, saying in 2019:
“Bringing the courts together under one amalgamated structure creates a single point of entry for families who will no longer be bounced around between different courts – an issue that occurs too often in the current system and can lead to lengthy delays for families because matters have to begin again.”
The push, for which Mr Porter and the Morrison Government have struggled to gain bipartisan support in the Senate, led to Mr Porter striking an agreement over nearly two years of negotiations with One Nation leader Pauline Hanson and Independent senator replacing Nick Xenophon Rex Patrick in order to secure the votes in the bill’s latest pass through the Senate.
Attorney-General Porter has won a long-fought battle to reform the family courts in a streamlined, one-stop image, however he cannot escape the scrutiny of families limping through a hobbled courts system, and as these changes come into effect it is possible that Mr Porter’s darkest moment may have happened in full view of the Australian public.
KM
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