President's Report Summer 2010-11

President's Report Summer 2010-11

Sorry for the delay with this newsletter but we have been run off our feet with people’s problems, mainly denial of access and child support issues being the main problems.

The National Conference held on the 16th 17th and 18th June was a very good success. although the numbers who attended were down to a bit over the fifty mark, this was because three weeks prior to commencement date the Parliament contacted us and stated they had cancelled our right to host the conference in the Parliament main committee room, because the American President was now coming to Australia, and they required all the rooms in the Parliament. This threw us into a state of shock as we knew a lot of people were attending the conference from different States because of the fact that it was being held in the Nation’s Parliament. I contacted those I knew were registered and told them, some cancelled. The irony of it all just 4 days before the conference was due to start the American President cancelled his trip so we were given the main committee room back, and the conference went ahead.

The speakers were all great, many top politicians, the Deputy Chief Justice of the Family Court, The Deputy Secretary of the Child Support Agency, The director of Family Relationship Services, DNA QLD, Grandparents, National President Of PWP Australia, Speakers from other organisations, our Branch presidents and others.

It was really a good conference and everyone who attended stated so.

There was a lot of discussion of where we are in Family Law in Australia and were and how we are going to tackle the extreme bias in the system, and bring about complete fairness and equality.

We came up with four main points that we will be taking to the new Federal Government, the opposition the Greens all Senators and MPs.

1. There has to be an Office of the Status of Men, or a Minister for men to counteract the office of the Status of Women. This is a direct discrimination.
2. The Government spend a fortune of taxpayers money advertising no violence against women and children, this is discrimination as there is also violence against men, the adds should be no violence against women, men, and children.
3. Funding for men’s services and men’s organisations must be on the same scale as it is for women’s services and organisations, Women’s services receive hundreds of millions dollars more than men’s services. We agree and support that women need and deserve these services, but men need and deserve and have the right to have the services on the same scale of funding, this is discrimination.
4. The Family Court of Australia is the only Court that makes orders yet can’t enforce and uphold it’s own orders, it is a complete failure in this area, and this must be addressed, otherwise the Government and the Family Court can not claim the fallacy that they work in the best and paramount interest of the child, in fact they are turning a blind eye to the abuse of the child’s rights.

We want the government to introduce into law a child enforcement collection agency to be able to enforce the orders and make sure that both the child’s right and the other parent’s rights are enforced when the denial of access takes place. This can be done in a number of ways either by the Government giving the Family Court more money to set up the enforcement within the Courts premises, or by empowering the State and Federal Police to act immediately on the orders.

The Attorney General told me in his office 2 years ago that the government was looking to introduce enforcement laws, but nothing has been done 2years on.

Lone Fathers and all other associated organisations make it quite clear to Government, the Family Court, the Federal Magistrates Court, and the Australian community, we are not about cutting into or denying services already in existence for women, we fully support them, but the discrimination must stop, or they face a class action against them.

These will also be released to the media.

There has been to many suicides of good men in this country because laws don’t protect their rights, and to many children being denied their rights to have substantial time with their father. Family law in Australia is a billion dollar industry, made out of unfortunate peoples misery through marriage and relationship breakdown. and while Governments allow and continue to discriminate between the sexes they are causing much of the problems and violence to happen. A special thanks to all those mums and dads that attended the national conference