Page 1151 - Week 04 - Thursday, 17 March 2005
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extends it. There is concern that it could go on forever. I do, however, note that the extension is to be for a stated period. If that were adhered to, there would not necessarily be any need for most of these orders to go on forever. That may be a sensible amendment, but we do need to watch it because some groups have expressed concern that it might go on forever.
Mr Speaker, it has been of some concern to the opposition and, indeed, to a number of other people that in this act, as with some other acts, there are not any provisions or penalties for a person who makes a malicious or wilfully wrong application against another person. We do feel that the government should look at the making of false, malicious, wrongful, unfounded allegations against another person, because we are dealing with serious stuff. We are dealing with people being thrown out of their homes and having orders made against them seeing their children. If the other party is simply being malicious because of a family breakdown or divorce proceedings, that causes the innocent party, the aggrieved party who then becomes the real victim, a great deal of angst, a great deal of difficulty, in actually redressing that situation. People need to be deterred from doing that.
I have said a similar thing before in this place in terms of the lack of any provision to deal with malicious complaints against the police. Complaints against the police are terribly serious and they need to be taken seriously. Indeed, I have seen police officers in various jurisdictions sacked, and rightly so, for wrongful acts. But there needs also to be that protection to stop malicious complaints. That is another instance in which there should be some provisions to stop spurious acts. Anybody who has practised in the family law jurisdiction for any length of time will tell you that often these types of acts are used just to gain an advantage in a Family Court proceeding.
I had a client once who was involved in a pretty straightforward divorce, if there is such a thing. A young air force man, he and his wife had been married for three years when his wife took out a domestic violence order against him ex parte on the basis that he had made threats to her. He told me that that might have happened, but she had done the same to him and they had had a few verbal altercations. I told him to go down to the court and get his own, which he did, and we had the rather ridiculous situation of both people having orders against them, which basically cancelled out each other, when there was no objective likelihood of them actually doing damage of any sort to each other. I am well aware, having heard quite often and seen quite often, that acts such as that are being used as a tactic. Probably, steps need to be taken to ensure that this legislation is used for proper purposes.
Mr Speaker, I understand that there was meant to be a fair bit of consultation on this legislation. I was told that a paper went out and various groups were invited to make comments on it. It has been brought to my attention that the Lone Fathers Association sent in, I think, 104 pages of comment. They contacted me recently and said that they did not think that any of their comments had been taken on board.
I have a short note from them in relation to their concerns. I am not going to read all of it, but some of their concerns seem on the surface to be worthy of putting on the record. They state that the new legislation will interfere with civil liberties. They also state that mental injury could be anything you want it to be and say it is. They also say that cases of domestic violence require a higher level of protection, but the bill fails to make the
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