Child Protection

Separating families face longer delays

Senior Registrars are responsible for making interim parenting, residence and contact orders, ahead of a final hearing.

Mr Robert McClelland MP, Member for Barton (NSW)
said the number of Senior Registrars will plummet from 8 to just 3 at the end of this financial year, down from an original 21 in 1999. Senior Registrars will be lost in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.

The cuts were forced on the Family Court when the Howard Government slashed over $3 million from its budget in 2000 to establish the Federal Magistrates Court.

At the time the Howard Government short-sightedly assumed the Federal Magistrates Court would fill the gaping hole it had blown in the Family Court> '> s services.

Parents and children left waiting in the Family Court for their cases to be heard know otherwise.

The reality is that setting up the Federal Magistrates Court was never going to be a substitute for ensuring the Family Court had sufficient resources to handle interim cases.

These interim cases will now have to be heard by Family Court Judges, who will be diverted from final hearings and whose numbers are already depleted by the snail-pace with which Attorney-General Daryl Williams makes judicial appointments.

It is time for the Attorney-General to review his decision to deprive the Family Court of its Senior Registrars, which is only adding to the distress of separating families with cases before the court.

Separating parents and their children experience enough problems without having to face the added trauma of unnecessary court delays.

© 2001 Community & Public Sector Union - State Public Services Federation (CPSU-SPSF) - National Office

http://www.cpsu-spsf.asn.au/campaigns/child_protection/20030408_125.html
Last Modified: 15 Nov 2005