Don't mention the war!

- No one dares talk about how the new family law bill empowers women to destroy fathers using false allegations.

Big news - Australia has become one of the world leaders when it comes to men suffering false allegations. Look at this fascinating new YouGov survey, involving 9,432 people across 8 countries. Australia came out as the worst country, after India, when people were asked if they had been falsely accused of abuse.

What’s going on here? The answer is simple. It’s the feminist capture of our family law system. The YouGov survey showed false accusations in Australia are more likely to be made as part of a child custody dispute than anywhere else in the world – they are 41% of such allegations in this country. Overall, the survey showed 80% of victims of false allegations in this country are male and almost a third (30%) of people surveyed know a victim of false allegations made in the last year.

For decades feminist ideologues have been manipulating the family law system by claiming that all women and THEIR children are at risk of attack by violent ex-partners. This sets the scene for women to make false violence allegations – a tactic which works a treat to give women control of the divorce process, denying men any real role in their children’s lives.  It’s a brilliant ploy, which feminists have been systematically cementing in place.

Next month their ship will come in. Labor’s draconian new family law bill will sail through the Senate, with the Greens joining forces with Labor to enshrine women’s absolute power to use false allegations to destroy men’s relationships with their children.

Having long been internationally celebrated for protecting the right of children to care from both divorced parents, this new Act will mean Australia will return to the grim days of mostly sole mother custody.

This is THE most significant social change in recent history, impacting millions of families across the country. For all the fuss about The Voice referendum and endless trans controversies, issues which directly affect only tiny numbers, this new bill will cause devastation to children across our community. Current estimates suggest there will be more than 300,000 family breakups involving children in the next decade. It is just astonishing that this is all passing unchallenged, indeed almost unnoticed.

Well, perhaps not. Given Australian feminists’ brilliantly orchestrated march through our institutions, it shouldn’t surprise me that these powerful ideologues have cowed most of our parliament and media into silence.

Silence that is, about the truth of what is happening here - which is nothing to do with the feminist narrative that the new bill is about keeping children safe. Their critical goal has been to set aside the many decades of international evidence showing it is harmful for children to grow up without dads. That was the message enshrined in the Howard government’s landmark 2006 law act promoting joint parental responsibility. It was passed with bipartisan support and proved a real hit with the public - “overwhelmingly supported by parents, legal professionals, and family relationship service professionals,” according to research by the Australian Institute of Family Studies.

Feminist scholars were determined to resist this recognition of dads’ vital role in the family.  They leapt into action pouring out articles claiming sharing care risked exposing children to violence.   

This set the scene for Julia Gillard’s proudly feminist government to remove the 2006 penalties for perjury and place violence accusations front and centre of decision-making about sharing of care of children. Her government also greatly expanded the definition of domestic “violence” to include emotional and psychological abuse, threatening behaviour, etc. – adding enormously to the list of families precluded from court-approved shared care.  

Now the war was on, with magistrates’ courts overwhelmed with false violence accusations which most magistrates have acknowledged are being used to gain strategic advantage in child custody matters. A survey of 38 magistrates in Queensland found 74% agreed restraining orders are often used for tactical purposes. Similarly, 90% of 68 NSW magistrates agreed restraining orders are often sought as tactical devices in family law disputes, “serving to deprive former partners of contact with their children.”

In a national survey of over 2,500 respondents, more than half agreed that “women going through custody battles often make up or exaggerate claims of domestic violence in order to improve their case.”

People know this is happening – including police who are starting to speak out about the enormous amount of their time consumed by false allegations. Two years ago the Queensland Police Union made a submission to a family law inquiry pointing out that false allegations of domestic violence are regularly used to gain advantage in family law disputes, with members of the police force sometimes finding themselves on the receiving end. 

In some areas of Queensland, domestic violence takes up to 80% of police time. Note that in NSW, domestic violence assaults make up only 4.8% of major crimes but take up 50-70% of police time. Many of you will have seen the YouTube video I made some years ago with the retired NSW police chief voicing his frustration that the domestic violence racket requires police to administer unjust laws.

That’s the current reality. But now, without any mandate from the electorate and ignoring recommendations from a series of inquiries, this Labor government is taking matters a huge leap further. They are wiping out any mention in the law of children’s rights to two parents in their lives, removing the joint presumption of shared parental responsibility and ditching the requirement to consider shared or substantial care in parenting plans – the key elements which promote the sharing of parenting.

(Note that the 2006 Act didn’t promote shared equal care – as was sometimes assumed – but did result in many more dads having substantial care of their children. The real impact was outside the courts where sensible parents made decisions about post separation parenting, by themselves, or with a lawyer or mediator. Many bought the message in the Act that children needed their dads.)

But under the new Act shared care is only to be considered “when it is safe to do so.” There’s an expanded list of excuses for mothers to contravene contact orders, it will be easier to brand a man a “vexatious litigant” which effectively bans him from returning to court. And so it goes on.

(Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has even announced a new bill next year promising a greater share of the marital assets to victims of violence. How’s that for a powerful financial incentive to add to the massive handouts already available to alleged victims, which I described in my blog last year on the domestic violence gravy train? Dreyfus has proved himself a lying weasel,  having falsely claimed that previous inquiries had recommended his proposed changes, which he describes as “minor” and in the best interests of children.)    

What’s absolutely shocking is that these momentous changes sailed through the lower house of parliament, with barely a whimper of protest. The Opposition voted against the bill but didn’t even have the gumption to move an amendment to try to get joint parental responsibility reinstated. Yes, it wouldn’t have got through with Labor and the Greens, the anti-male Teals and Jacquie Lambie’s group all lined up to pretend the whole thing was just about keeping children safe. But surely their constituents would have liked to see them put up a fight.  

AND NO ONE DARED MENTION THE WAR. Not a single word was spoken in parliament about false allegations – yet most parliamentarians are all too aware of this elephant in the room.  But they didn’t dare name it, knowing our feminist-led media would destroy anyone who told the truth about what is going on here. The domestic violence card worked brilliantly to silence all proper debate about the Bill.

Not one of our wimpish representatives had the guts to point out what every judge, magistrate, lawyer and police officer knows to be the case – that these changes to the law will bring poorer outcomes for children, a fresh flood of new accusations against fathers, more conflict between divorced parents, a huge surge in litigation as men pay out to try to see their children, and more suicides for men as they realise that their chances of a fair hearing in an already biased court system will now be further reduced.

In the third week of October comes the final debate in the Senate – presumably the government is counting on the media being distracted by The Voice referendum that previous weekend to ensure it passes largely unnoticed. At least we can count on brave Pauline Hanson to speak out. Four years ago, she was the only person prepared to call out the false allegation racket, demanding this should be part of the Morrison government Family Law inquiry, where she was the co-chair. She was slammed by our mainstream media for daring to raise the issue and ultimately snowed, when the inquiry was stacked by ideologues who refused to properly address the key questions.

But she’s still taking them on, planning to speak out in the Senate when the new act is debated, pointing out that the proposed legislation contravenes the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Australia signed and ratified in 1990, which says “a child should have the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.” And she’ll provide evidence challenging the notion children are only safe from violence in the care of their mothers, highlighting recent high-profile cases in Australia showing this isn’t the case. Jo Thomson-Jones’ story featured on the Mothers of Sons website, is a tragic example. Her three-year-old granddaughter was killed by her violent mother.

In Professor Patrick Parkinson’s submission regarding the proposed changes to the Act, he quoted AIFS study showing many more fathers than mothers were concerned for their children’s safety in shared parenting arrangements. That’s unsurprising given that stepfathers and mum’s boyfriend pose by far the greatest risk of sexual abuse of children. And even though contested family court cases often feature child sexual abuse accusations against the father, judges have determined that only 12% of these allegations are true.

I spoke recently to a Canberra man who after years of battling won substantial care of his toddler son. His wife had left, removing their baby son from their home and then managed to get a violence protection order after claiming she was afraid that leaving him might have made him angry! She originally offered him one day a fortnight supervised contact with the child. He spent an absolute fortune on legal help, including $25,000 for a child expert assessment, and after a long, patient battle miraculously achieved 40% care of his two-year old. His lawyer told me that if this new act becomes law, chances are slim that this could happen again. No wonder this dad spent weeks writing to members of parliament, trying unsuccessfully to meet with them to explain what’s really going on.

I spent time in Canberra a few weeks ago talking to Senators about this impending disaster. What was tragic is most said they had barely heard from anyone opposing the new bills. I’d like to think that some of the maverick Senators, like Alex Antic and Gerard Rennick and Matt Canavan who’ve been so brave on other issues, will take this one on.

But it’s a big ask to mention the war and they need massive encouragement – please urgently write to them and to cross-benchers who might conceivably help. Chances are it won’t stop this bill going through but we have to break down this shameful silencing of truth about this vital issue for families.