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MICHAEL FLOOD, AUSTRALIA INSTITUTE: It does seem to me though very strange that we're all committed to increasing fathers involvement in families after divorce and separation and yet the main way we think we can do that is through family law. It seems to me it's not family law that stops fathers in general from being involved with children after divorce and separation. It's in fact to do with patterns of parenting before separation. The fact that vast majority of fathers are not actively involved with children on a shared basis prior to divorce and separation. And that's not because they're bad fathers or they're lazy fathers. It's because of their workplace involvement, it's because of policy barriers and it's even because of the kind of cultural barriers that make men feel they're just poor parents. So I think if we don't tackle those workplace barriers and policy barriers and cultural barriers then we can tweak family law all we want, we still will have fathers generally not involved with children after divorce and separation.

HELEN DALLEY: Graham, you're going through this process right now. Do you seriously and honestly want 50/50 shared parenting?

GRAHAME BERRY: I take on board the comments a lot of others have made and if I am to have realistic work in the field that I'm trained in, that is not realistic to have 50 per cent of the parenting but certainly much higher percentage than is currently available and the comment made earlier -

HELEN DALLEY: So what, you want to be more than a weekend dad?

GRAHAME BERRY : Yes, definitely. But the system, as I see it, is the Family Court system, as soon as there's any hint of violence or anything that's not for resolution. It's for ripping the parents apart and keeping them apart until somebody makes a decision then the whole things stumbles over itself, they leap frog case over case until months and months go by and nothing happens and I'd like my learned friend here to explain why a solicitor said, to my face, "When I have a female client in a separation dispute, I tell them all to go and get an AVO, it makes it easier."

GARY WATTS, LAW COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIA: Well, it's just not my experience that most of the women who go to the Family Court have AVOs. My experience is that AVOs are usually based on a realistic fear that a woman has presented to a State magistrate. There's not a conspiracy out there amongst women to go and get AVOs as a tactic, as a general proposition.

HELEN DALLEY: Ryan, you're shaking your head at the back there.

RYAN MESSENGER, DADS IN DISTRESS: What a load of cobblers. And I am absolutely flabbergasted because my daughter was abducted to the United States. They knew my situation, they knew I couldn't travel for health reasons because I'm financially crippled at the moment and yet I had a police officer come to my door and serve me with an AVO from halfway around the world. Now you can't tell me that they didn't take that out because it would be advantageous to their case.

GARY WATTS: I don't know the facts of your case but I'm saying my experience is as a general proposition, women do not maliciously go and get AVOs unless they have, in their mind, realistic fears of violence or harassment.

GRAHAME BERRY: Could I then ask, in some of the cases that I have helped with, my role in Dads in Distress, one gentleman has had 164 separate AVOs in a 12-month period and every one of them he has defended and defeated.

HELEN DALLEY: Gary, how do you respond to that? There's obviously a feeling that AVOs are used and perhaps abused.

GARY WATTS: I'm not saying that there aren't individual cases where it happens. I'm saying that across the board it does not happen systemically as a tactic for Family Court purposes. Look, we've got a situation where in the last five years 500,000 people have separated in Australia. We know that only about 6 per cent of them end up having a judicial determination made. So you can cite extreme examples, you can cite exceptions, but that is the reality in terms of somebody like me who's working at the coalface every day in this jurisdiction.

MICHAEL GREEN QC: That just shows that someone at the coalface, of course, is like someone looking at the wood and missing the trees because very few people I meet, men I meet - men, women and children are happy with the system and in particular, that both mothers, not only fathers, it's not fair to say that the whole movement for change has been driven by fathers groups, it's been driven by an awakening of consciousness and common sense from a lot of people, including many mothers, including a lot of children who want change and have been through the system and have suffered and even though they haven't gone to judicial hearing that doesn't mean to say everything's hunky-dory at all. They're not happy. The Family Law Council, the various law societies are not happy with the Family Court processes at the moment and even the Chief Justice has been known to say that at least in children's matters, that the adversarial process is not appropriate.

RYAN MESSENGER: Well, I was going to say, you know, I was actually a victim of domestic violence.

HELEN DALLEY: You were?

RYAN MESSENGER: That's the irony in my case and you know, I constantly just find it completely outrageous that - I'm listening to these arguments and I just can't fathom the reason behind it. You know, we need a more inquisitorial system. You know, we need to - I was laughed at basically. When I asked - when I rang the police, they told me they weren't coming.

ELSBETH MCINNES: That's the experience of a lot of women who ring the police, also.

RYAN MESSENGER: And that's the point. It's about equality. It's not just women that have problems. Men have problems too. I was involved in a serious accident...

HELEN DALLEY: Elsbeth is saying that a lot of women don't get answered when they suffer abuse or domestic violence too.

RYAN MESSENGER: Well, I don't believe that. I believe the law is very good. They were there within two minutes when my wife called them. I couldn't get them to come out and I made two phone calls at three o'clock in the morning. They were busy.

MICHAEL FLOOD: It's very clear to me the harm that some fathers rights groups do actually cause - of listening to fathers because when fathers rights groups tell lies, tell lies about large numbers of women taking out malicious AVOs, or invent the lie that women are as domestically violent towards men as the reverse, certainly that happens but it's not 50/50. When fathers rights groups tell those lies, they actually taint as backlash the need to address men and the need, which I feel, and I'm sure all of us share, to address the pain and the stress which many men feel and address that in compassionate and constructive ways.

JOHN LEHOCZKY: All these men who join these groups have all had a real shit time in their lives, poor buggers.

MICHAEL FLOOD: Yeah, and they need compassion and support.

JOHN LEHOCZKY: I don't think they're lying when they're - I think lying is a far too strong a word to use. These blokes have been through hell. I've known some, you know, they string themselves up, they blow their brains out. These blokes have been through a lot of shit. Lying is too strong.

MICHAEL FLOOD: Certainly when I hear an individual man talking about having been subject to violence by his wife or having had a malicious AVO taken out by an ex-partner, I'm inclined to be sympathetic and supportive in my response. What I don't support though is the broader political claims which leaders of some such groups make because I don't think they help the cause of fathers at all.

HELEN DALLEY: But if that's the individual experience, isn't that possibly that's the broad experience as well?

MICHAEL FLOOD: The research doesn't suggest it is.

HELEN DALLEY: No?

PRU GOWARD: The research suggests that overwhelmingly, domestic violence is experienced by women.

MICHAEL GREEN QC: But Helen, this is surely this is diverting from...

HELEN DALLEY: This is part of the debate, Michael. It's quite central to the debate.

PRU GOWARD: But hate is the belief.

MICHAEL GREEN QC: But it's not there in the enormous way it's being presented. There are a lot of bad and dysfunctional - sorry, there's a small minority of bad and dysfunctional and violent women. There's a small minority of bad and dysfunctional violent fathers. And we're not going to get anywhere by comparing and contrasting and all we want -

HELEN DALLEY: But just a minute, Pru Goward is saying the research clearly shows that more women suffer domestic violence than men and Michael ... is saying that too.

MICHAEL GREEN QC: I don't want to get into it because it is highly disputed and it depends.

PRU GOWARD: The homicide rate is overwhelming.

MICHAEL GREEN QC: It certainly is. Certainly the UK and US researches - it depends on your sample, it depends on the nature of your definitions of all these things. But really, really the thing is surely we have to engineer a system. This is what we're talking about, a family system that quickly deals with those problem cases if there is violence, if there is abuse, if there is entrenched and proven conflict that impacts on not only the parents but the children. We have to have a system which deals with that very quickly and very timely and really investigates it and puts it to rest before everyone suffers too much, particularly the children.

LARRY ANTHONY, MINISTER FOR CHILDREN AND YOUTH AFFAIRS: If we're to think what's in the best interests of the child, then obviously it's that child having access to both parents.

HELEN DALLEY: That's in the legislation now?

LARRY ANTHONY: No, that is not operating now and that's why the committee have come up with a range of recommendations from conciliation to mediation through to a families tribunal is to try and stop that adversarial situation from beginning from day one. Because one of the motivating reasons why we had this inquiry in the first place is the concern from the Prime Minister down is that there are a lot of single parent families, particularly young boys growing up, where they don't have access to their father or a male role model.

HELEN DALLEY: But can you socially engineer that?

LARRY ANTHONY: No, I don't think you can socially engineer it but what you can do though is take out some of the road blocks that makes it difficult. I mean, the committee haven't recommended a 50/50 joint split. What they've recommended is shared parenting. And I think the debate's moved on now and to their credit by a bipartisan committee they've come to this recommendation where shared parenting should be the involvement of both biological parents unless there's a good reason why that shouldn't be.

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