JONES:
The Prime Minister has entered this critical issue of the debate, least about this critical issue, of children as victims of broken relationships. Prime Minister Howard has reportedly moved to restore the role of fathers. He says young boys need male role models in their lives. The Prime Minister has said if a boy lives with his mother, sees little of his father, has no older brothers or close uncles or close family male adult friends, and typically might go to a primary school where there are very few male teachers, it's often not until the boy's 15 or 16 that he comes across a male role model with which he can identify. This is a very big issue. The Prime Minister's on the line. Prime Minister good morning.
PRIME MINISTER:
Good morning Alan.
JONES:
Thank you for your time PM. This is a big issue isn't it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well it's a very big issue. The Government would like to a have a thorough discussion with the community about it. We're looking at an inquiry at a parliamentary level into the concept of what's called a rebuttable presumption of joint custody. While that sounds a mouthful, what it means is that the better arrangement is that a child be in the joint custody of both the mother and the father. That obviously means that an arrangement about shared residency and so forth will need to be instituted. Now I'm not saying that we're going to change the law to allow that to happen but we are going to look at this again because I am very worried and many people are worried (tape break) boys out of broken families end up not having effective male role models, perhaps ever, and in the circumstances that you quoted from my remarks yesterday, they live with their mother, they don't have older brothers or uncles or male grandparent with whom they can identify, and they go to schools now where there are very few male teachers. They can often be 15 or 16 and perhaps never before they find a male role model and it does result in perhaps not the most balanced upbringing and that's something that we should try as a society to see if we can address and I think it's a very important issue and I feel a responsibility to initiate a community debate. And there'll be a lot of people who'll disagree with me. Well that's fair enough and I want to hear their views and they may persuade me that it's not in the interests of children to change the existing laws. But one of the roles of the Prime Minister is to initiate community debate on important social issues.
JONES:
Do you feel that there are forces though that have over a period of time, and I have to say my correspondence tell me the Family Court is one of the dismantled society's regard for the family?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well I don't think there's any one group that's responsible for that. There are some people in society who regard the institution of the family, and I'm not suggesting this is the Family Court, but regard the institution of the family as some kind of old fashioned encumbrance. Now that is not my view, that's not to say that all families are perfect. Many families are not but it still remains the case that a happy functioning family provides a person with far and away the best emotional environment in which to grow up.
JONES:
You have to wonder what ideology does permeates outfits like the Family Court where statistics show that the very thing you're talking about, joint custody, and you're just saying investigate the notion that each parent might spend equal time with the child and the Family Court does that on only 3% of cases. It's hard to believe that in 97% of other cases the other partner is not a suitable parent.
PRIME MINISTER:
Alan, I think one of the reasons for that is that historically we have adopted the view that when a marriage breaks up, a relationship breaks up then the courts have got to decide between the mother or the father for custody. It's only in very rare circumstances that other arrangements are ordered, in 3% as you mentioned. The situation at the moment is that the presumption is that custody will be given to one or the other. What we're looking at is to alter that so the presumption is that it will be a shared arrangement unless circumstances suggest otherwise and that is turning the existing arrangement, as it were, on its head.
JONES:
Yes. Family law, I mean we use law in that context, and yet where the non-custodial parent is given access, in many many instances that access is completely ignored so the custodial parent moves into Townsville, the non-custodial parent is a worker at Blacktown, can't afford to get to Townsville, can't afford to bring the children to Blacktown, never sees the children. The law doesn't seem to work.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well the law often doesn't work in situations like this because when you have people behaving in an embittered way because of the break up of their relationship with insufficient regard for the interests of the child then no law can in a sense modify that behaviour. You can... a court can order something but if an individual sets out to frustrate that, it can be very difficult to enforce it and it can very expensive for the aggrieved party to bring it out and enforce [inaudible]. The reality is that if you are living on an average income in this country, it is very expensive to bring up...
JONES:
[Inaudible]
PRIME MINISTER:
... if you end up breaking up your marriage and you want to bring up another family, it becomes almost impossible.
JONES:
Absolutely it's [inaudible]. Now if the flip side of what you're talking about ... this suggestion also, separated parents who spend more time with their children could end up paying less maintenance.
PRIME MINISTER:
Well that is an issue that keeps coming up in relation to the operation of the child support agency and there is a lot of community unhappiness with the way that works. I don't think you'll ever eliminate all of that unhappiness because, the point I mentioned a moment ago, that if you've got to support two families on an ordinary income it becomes damn near impossible.
JONES:
Absolutely.
PRIME MINISTER:
And I sympathise with those people. On the other hand, they have responsibilities to the children as their mother or father.
JONES:
Yeah, I see there was a proposal... people are writing to me about this. I mean, the classic case is one person, a young man who was in my office came to me to tell me he had to pay $1800 a month after tax to his ex-wife for her part-time custody of one child. $1800 a month, I mean it is a phenomenal amount of money. So it forces the other partner in almost peddling..
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, it is... we have to understand that this is the consequence of marriage break-up and it's a very costly thing for individuals and, of course, it's the question of what is the balance of financial responsibility between the natural parents of a child and the broader community because if the natural parents don't provide the support, then the rest of the taxpayers have to provide the support. So, there's a constant tussle here and tension between what the community should be paying and what parents should be paying.
JONES:
Correct. Would you consider creating some kind of inquiry whereby, if you talk about you want this debate, whereby the public could have some input. How do the public, those people who are the victims of both the family law court and the child support agency, men and women, how do they get an opportunity to present the real case studies about all this?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well Alan, the Cabinet is looking at a parliamentary inquiry into certainly the custody issue and perhaps also some aspects of the operation of the child support agency and I hope to have something more to say about that next week.
JONES:
Okay. Just while I've got you there on the family court, it has dealt itself...[inaudible] yesterday that the asylum seeker controversy, ruling that your Government is acting illegally by indefinitely detaining children in camps and it's been described today as a landmark majority decision. What's your view on all of that?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well, we're looking at the implications of it. We wouldn't normally regard the family court as the final court on an issue like that. We are taking legal advice and the possibility of an appeal is strong.
JONES:
So the family court immigration issue though is it?
PRIME MINISTER:
Yes, look, I'm not... I'm choosing my words carefully.
JONES:
Right.
PRIME MINISTER:
We are looking at the legal consequences, obviously is not the final court of appeal on a matter such as this and the possibility of a resort to an appeal by the Government is quite strong.
JONES:
Just while I've got you talking families, the other thing, the other impediment to some kind of normalcy within families is this family tax benefit where families have been trapped in debt. Have you... have you got a [inaudible]?
PRIME MINISTER:
Well we are currently, as I think I've indicated to you before, looking at some ways of preventing the debts arising in the first place. Because bear in mind, we're not dealing here with penalising people, we're dealing here with ensuring that the entitlement that people have is accurately delivered to them and if they, through misstating their income, [inaudible] an overpayment, then it's not unreasonable for the rest of us that they pay it back. And equally, if they're underpaid during the year it's not unreasonable that it'd be topped up at the end of the year. I don't know that that affects the normalcy of their family life.
JONES:
But they have been encouraged nonetheless as to how to assess that income and when a mistake is made, they find themselves in debt to the tax office. Now the families who've earned as much, $1000 that's a lot of money though.
PRIME MINISTER:
That's understood and that is why arrangements for repayment of that typically involves payment in the future of a slightly lower amount than what they would normally be entitled to, so there's no particularly heavy burden on them. But we are looking at ways of making it even easier.
JONES:
Just going back to the family law court and the child support agency. So, you think there will be an opportunity somewhere down the track for people to be able to part of this debate and make submissions to the Government?
PRIME MINISTER:
Oh yes. We are looking at a parliamentary inquiry and I hope to have something more to say about that next week... it will allow people generally to follow the discussion and to put views.
JONES:
Good on you. Prime Minister, just before you go - do you have a timetable for the announcement of Governor General?
PRIME MINISTER:
All I can say at the moment is that the matter is being handled appropriately.
JONES:
Well that's [inaudible] Very good, PM.
PRIME MINISTER:
Okay.
JONES:
Thank you, PM. Have a good weekend.
PRIME MINISTER:
You too.
[ends]