The Family Law Amendment Bill 2023 (the Bill) is the first in a set of proposed legislative reforms to the family law system, responding to previous inquiries and reports including the Australian Law Reform Commission’s (ALRC) 2019 inquiry report.
This Bill focuses on amendments to prioritise the best interest of children in the family law system. The Bill also contains a range of wider reforms which have a direct effect on psychologists working within the family law system.
The Australian Psychological Society (APS) therefore welcomed the opportunity to contribute to the Attorney-General’s Department consultation on the Exposure Draft to the Bill. We were pleased that the Bill contains proposed reforms to the family law system which are generally consistent with our previous submissions, including to the ALRC inquiry.
This consultation process was tightly focused on whether the Exposure Draft Bill effectively implemented the recommendations of the ALRC report. Our response therefore focused on several key issues, including the following:
- The APS welcomes the proposed new factors for considering the ‘best interests’ of a child, including a requirement to consider the ‘developmental, psychological and emotional needs of the child’ and the capacity of proposed carers to provide for these needs.
- The APS supports the removal of equal shared parental responsibility and specific time provisions. This change will reduce the need for psychologists to correct misunderstandings about the operations of the current provisions when working with clients involved in the family law system. However, concerted education and support to practitioners will be needed to change these entrenched beliefs in the community.
- The APS is pleased to see new legislative protections which seek to limit the use of information disclosed in therapeutic settings (including psychologist-client interactions) in family law proceedings. We recommend that these provisions be strengthened further, including through the introduction of a rebuttable presumption against the admission of evidence from therapeutic settings.
- While the APS supports efforts to improve the quality and consistency of family reports, we do not support the proposed regulatory scheme for family report writers in its current form. The Bill would allow the introduction of additional, but as yet unspecified, standards for report writers, including psychologists. We are concerned that this framework may duplicate existing regulatory and professional standards and increase administrative and compliance burdens, especially for highly-regulated professionals such as psychologists. We are also concerned that the scope of standards that can be made under the Bill may undermine the professional and clinical autonomy required by psychologists and other practitioners to work effectively as family report writers. Finally, we object to the Bill authorising the creation of civil penalties and criminal offences against report writers for non-compliance with the yet-to-be-determined standards, and without due oversight and debate.
The APS looks forward to working with the Government and the Parliament in the progress of this Bill, and in advocating for broader policy reforms within the family law system.
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