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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 01 Hansard (Thursday, 12 February 2004) . . Page.. 269 ..

Children are suffering in Australia because of the absence of fathers. According to the findings of Bruce Smyth and Anna Ferro from the Australian Institute of Family Studies, more than one million children in Australia live separately from their fathers. More than one-third of children who still see their dads never spend a night with them. The problem of fatherlessness is having a devastating impact on our children and our nation.

According to research conducted by Dr Bruce Robinson, author of Fathering from the Fast Lane, it is estimated that fatherlessness is costing Australia over $13 billion per year. That is a staggering amount of money that could be better spent on health, education, law and order, aged care and so on. In an article entitled “The facts on fatherlessness”, Bill Muhlenberg states that children who grow up in a fatherless household are more likely to experience poverty, low educational performance and increased levels of crime, drug abuse, mental health problems and child abuse. Poor or no modelling of fatherhood to young men will have a devastating effect on those men when eventually they wish to form a family.

We have all heard evidence that the abused—whatever form that abuse may take—become the abusers. In other words, the child rightly or wrongly takes on the attributes or culture of the environment in which he or she grows up. The environment, modelling and learning in the early years, nought to seven in particular, can never be replaced or entirely erased should the child’s experience be negative or incomplete. The absence of a father, for whatever reason, will create a generation who have no idea how to form and support family life themselves.

Young men and women are now less able to form sustaining and meaningful relationships and maintain families. There is no such thing as a job for life these days. This may be a reason for the excessive delays in family formation and the intolerable pressures on parents.

MR SPEAKER: Order, members! Mrs Burke has the floor. There are too many conversations.

MRS BURKE: I give you the crdit to listen to you, Ms Tucker. Our culture is such that we are now party to longer working hours and multiple jobs in the maintenance of the family unit. The weight of that pressure falls on mothers and fathers. Alan Barron from the Institute of Men’s Studies, in a report prepared in June 2003, stated that the rate of suicide of men compared to women was nearly five to one. According to Professor John McDonald, co-director of the Men’s Health Information and Resource Centre, separated fathers are six times more likely to commit suicide than married men. We often have the notion that the rate of youth suicide is the highest among men in Australia, when in fact the highest rate is in the higher age group of 25 to 45 years.

This government and the community generally are not standing up for fathers, despite the abundant evidence that they have a crucial role to play in a child’s life. We do not hear anything from this government on the promotion of fathers, yet most of the male members of the government are fathers, and some are grandfathers. As is often said, and well meant, that children are our best and greatest investment. One of the crucial ways that we can invest in our children is recognising the important roles that fathers play in their lives. Wouldn’t you agree, Mr Hargreaves?

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