FAMILY Law experts have spoken out against a proposed bill to abolish the specialist, stand-alone Family Court saying it would have devastating impacts on families and result in a significant loss of structural, systemic specialisation.
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The bill, which is currently before parliament, has been labelled a "total disaster" by solicitors, who said children will be among those worst affected.
Eminent jurist and former Chief Justice, the Hon Elizabeth Evatt AC, was scathing in the proposed merger of the Family Court and the Federal Circuit Court (FCC) in a media statement released by the Law Council of Australia.
"The Family Court was designed purposely as a world-leading, specialist, stand-alone Court to deal only with family law matters, with the support of a dedicated multi-disciplinary team of counsellors and mediators. Its stand-alone nature is one its greatest attributes, providing protections for vulnerable people in need of family law assistance," the former Chief Justice said.
"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.
"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," she said.
Solicitors working in family law agreed.
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Lauren Ryan, solicitor with Kenny Spring, said her main concern is the proposal to do away with a specialist court and replace it with a general one.
"In doing so it is effectively getting rid of experts, not just legal experts, but also sociological experts, who work in domestic violence and understand family operations.
"There are a lot of judges who are well versed in these areas and they are experts dealing with them."
She said if the proposal comes into being, it will mean judges who lack background in family law will be making decisions which will affect children everywhere.
Ms Ryan also said The Family Law Courts are already busy, and from what they can see under the proposal, there will be one less judge, meaning even longer waiting times.
"There will be no resources to deal with urgent cases.
She said as it is if she were to file a family law matter today the hearing date wouldn't be until 2022.
