Hirst and the Family Court
I’ve just started on the latest edition of Quarterly Essays by John Hirst regarding the inadequacies of the Family Law Court in Australia.
I’ve only read the first section so I’m a little reluctant to pass judgement at this stage. However a couple of things are noteworthy. Firstly, that John Hirst has written it. I would loosely place him to the right of the political spectrum which would be a first for Quarterly Essays and an interesting move. This is not a criticism of QE who do a fine job and have managed to engage both the left and right quite will.
Secondly, I’m a little concerned that there are some sexist undertones to the argument. Generally the Family Law Court favours the mothers and, as Hirst has outlined, the law – or more importantly the implementation of the law – tends to discriminate against the non-custodial partner (generally the father). No doubt we have all heard of cases where Men have been discriminated against by this court and every legal institution will have its faults and make bad decisions.
The premise of the courts actions as the ‘caring court’ is that it protects the child. A fine principle I’m sure we’d all agree. This means being lenient on the custodial patent for illegally restricting access to the child by the non-custodial parent (generally the father). From what little I’ve read it would seem that there should be stronger penalties, carefully applied to the custodial parent for not granting access (often this is simply a matter of not answering the door when the father comes to pick the child up).
However the underlying assumption of Hirst’s argument (it would seem in my early reading) is that children need a male role model. This is something I flatly reject and I think this argument is inherently sexist (because mothers can’t bring up children on their own) and homophobic (because lesbians can’t bring up children which I’m sure extends to homosexuals as well).
What children need is a loving, relatively conflict free life. This comes in many shapes and sizes including single mothers and same-sex partners.
There is no...