- 'Experts' want divorce police
- By Paul Gray
- Herald Sun
- 19/01/2004 Make a Comment
- Contributed by: admin ( 100 articles in 2004 )
DID Charles "rub out'' Diana?
Even if he'd wanted to kill his ex-wife, a small question bothers me about the Charles-as-murderer theory.How, exactly, do you rig a high-speed car crash in a modern inner city, such as Paris?Even a novelist would struggle to make that convincing. Another romantic story?
The saga of Princess Diana's troubled relationship with her husband tells us something about marriage breakdown. There are no easy solutions.
Yet in Australia we persist in living with the idea that the pain associated with marriage and divorce can be solved, or at least lessened, by simply tinkering with the law. The Family Law Act, a triumph of 1970s social engineering, hit our nation in 1975. It encouraged the belief a more enlightened approach to divorce law would solve bitter marriage breakdowns.
The lie in that is proved by a federal parliamentary report, quietly released in the holiday season on December 29. Among the report's recommendations is that an investigative arm of the family law system should be established.
The new police-style investigative unit envisaged by the parliamentary family law committee would have powers to investigate allegations of violence and child abuse. It would be separate from state and territory child protection agencies.
So, we need a new family law police now?
Oh, how far we've come from that picture of happy divorce, painted by the Family Law Act's liberal founders all those years ago.
The truth is the law can achieve next to nothing in this difficult area. Marriage and divorce certainly have public consequences, but they are essentially private matters.
For decades, defenders of the Family Law Act have religiously promoted the view that our ``liberal'' divorce law removes the grubbiness of private divorce settlements.
This is a lie.
The Family Law Act doesn't de-privatise divorce -- it only makes it more bitter. This is because the Act allows one party to bring in an incredibly powerful weapon, the law, on their side, crushing and obliterating the other.
Divorce itself remains, essentially, a private affair. The Family Law Act just makes it nastier.
We kid ourselves when we think judges, lawyers or tribunals established by Parliament hold the answers to the pain caused by divorce.
Not that there isn't a great deal wrong with our family law system.
Overall, the system displays the same kind of arrogance towards ordinary people as the old Soviet Union showed towards the peoples of Eastern Europe.
"We will tell you what to do."
"And don't even think about bucking the system.''
The arrogance extends to the top.
Outspoken Family Court chief Alastair Nicholson regularly pours scorn on anyone who disagrees with him publicly on fair policy discussion. Not that Nicholson doesn't do his best, as a judge.
It's just that when he's not being a judge, he can't seem to stop himself from also trying to rule the roost of public policy discussion on every matter relating to family law.
Get the message, Al. The rest of us have a point of view on this too.
From a public policy point of view, the divisiveness of this issue centres on what the law should do.
Conservatives want to change family law because they want it to fix the problems associated with marriage breakdown.
Liberals don't want it changed -- because they think it already has.
On the conservative side, look at researcher Barry Maley of the Centre for Independent Studies. He is proposing the reintroduction of a desertion principle into family law. If one partner deserts another, the deserted partner would get a better deal out of the divorce settlement. SUCH changes might serve moral justice better than the current system. But would making divorce harder make for better marriages? I don't see why it would.
Marriage, we seem to have forgotten, is an inherently risky proposition.
Our society's leaders, though, seem to have bought the myth that better marriage arrangements can be engineered by "experts.''
Well, could anyone have engineered a more successful marriage between Diana and Charles? That would have been harder than a high-speed assassination.
paulgray@skynet.net.au
Even if he'd wanted to kill his ex-wife, a small question bothers me about the Charles-as-murderer theory.How, exactly, do you rig a high-speed car crash in a modern inner city, such as Paris?Even a novelist would struggle to make that convincing. Another romantic story?
The saga of Princess Diana's troubled relationship with her husband tells us something about marriage breakdown. There are no easy solutions.
Yet in Australia we persist in living with the idea that the pain associated with marriage and divorce can be solved, or at least lessened, by simply tinkering with the law. The Family Law Act, a triumph of 1970s social engineering, hit our nation in 1975. It encouraged the belief a more enlightened approach to divorce law would solve bitter marriage breakdowns.
The lie in that is proved by a federal parliamentary report, quietly released in the holiday season on December 29. Among the report's recommendations is that an investigative arm of the family law system should be established.
The new police-style investigative unit envisaged by the parliamentary family law committee would have powers to investigate allegations of violence and child abuse. It would be separate from state and territory child protection agencies.
So, we need a new family law police now?
Oh, how far we've come from that picture of happy divorce, painted by the Family Law Act's liberal founders all those years ago.
The truth is the law can achieve next to nothing in this difficult area. Marriage and divorce certainly have public consequences, but they are essentially private matters.
For decades, defenders of the Family Law Act have religiously promoted the view that our ``liberal'' divorce law removes the grubbiness of private divorce settlements.
This is a lie.
The Family Law Act doesn't de-privatise divorce -- it only makes it more bitter. This is because the Act allows one party to bring in an incredibly powerful weapon, the law, on their side, crushing and obliterating the other.
Divorce itself remains, essentially, a private affair. The Family Law Act just makes it nastier.
We kid ourselves when we think judges, lawyers or tribunals established by Parliament hold the answers to the pain caused by divorce.
Not that there isn't a great deal wrong with our family law system.
Overall, the system displays the same kind of arrogance towards ordinary people as the old Soviet Union showed towards the peoples of Eastern Europe.
"We will tell you what to do."
"And don't even think about bucking the system.''
The arrogance extends to the top.
Outspoken Family Court chief Alastair Nicholson regularly pours scorn on anyone who disagrees with him publicly on fair policy discussion. Not that Nicholson doesn't do his best, as a judge.
It's just that when he's not being a judge, he can't seem to stop himself from also trying to rule the roost of public policy discussion on every matter relating to family law.
Get the message, Al. The rest of us have a point of view on this too.
From a public policy point of view, the divisiveness of this issue centres on what the law should do.
Conservatives want to change family law because they want it to fix the problems associated with marriage breakdown.
Liberals don't want it changed -- because they think it already has.
On the conservative side, look at researcher Barry Maley of the Centre for Independent Studies. He is proposing the reintroduction of a desertion principle into family law. If one partner deserts another, the deserted partner would get a better deal out of the divorce settlement. SUCH changes might serve moral justice better than the current system. But would making divorce harder make for better marriages? I don't see why it would.
Marriage, we seem to have forgotten, is an inherently risky proposition.
Our society's leaders, though, seem to have bought the myth that better marriage arrangements can be engineered by "experts.''
Well, could anyone have engineered a more successful marriage between Diana and Charles? That would have been harder than a high-speed assassination.
paulgray@skynet.net.au
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