‘Obscenely high’: how family court costs are destroying parents and their children

Norton says as well as the repeated letter-writing, the case also involved multiple court applications and aborted legal mediations – all of which cost to launch and respond to.

It amounted to a form of financial abuse, she feels, and one that was able to happen in the current court system.

“As the family court system falls apart, all of the unethical, unscrupulous, bottom-feeding lawyers converge to extract money from the carnage,” she says.

Sarah Henderson, who sat on a parliamentary inquiry into the family violence and family law, told the ABC on Monday the inquiry found “many people were falling through the cracks”.

“The safety of children and child protection were key issues,” she said. “Some of the key recommendations were that family violence must be determined early in the proceedings. This ensures the right orders are made to protect children and too often that is not happening.”

Henderson said they recommended an initial assessment be made before any custody decisions and that shared equal parental responsibility should be abolished because it was being applied improperly and led to unsafe outcomes.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/dec/20/obscenely-high-how-family-court-costs-are-destroying-parents-and-their-children?

Profession pushes for advancement of women lawyers

The “Gender Equitable Engagement and Instruction Policy” initiative, spearheaded by the New Zealand Law Society (NZLS) and the New Zealand Bar Association (NZBA), aims to have at least 30% of court proceedings, arbitral proceedings, and major regulatory investigations led by women lawyers with relevant expertise by 1 December 2018. The policy has received the support of top firms, and some clients have also come on board.

http://www.nzlawyermagazine.co.nz/news/profession-pushes-for-advancement-of-women-lawyers-244994.aspx

Sexual abuse of children still continuing in institutions, royal commission head warns

The chair of Australia’s child sexual abuse royal commission, Justice Peter McClellan, has delivered his final address before a room of hundreds of survivors and advocates, telling them: “The sexual abuse of children is not just a problem of the past.”

“The failure to protect children has not been limited to institutions providing services to children,” McClellan told attendees. “Some of our most important state instrumentalities have failed. Police often refused to believe children. They refused to investigate their complaints of abuse. Many children who had attempted to escape abuse were returned to unsafe institutions by police.”

The greatest number of abusers worked in Catholic institutions, he said. Power afforded to leaders and the trust placed in them by parents and other staff, and a desire to protect institutional reputations allowed and facilitated the sexual abuse of children. Aggressive lawyers were engaged by institutions to silence them, he said.

After the hearing, Francis Sullivan, head of the Catholic church’s Truth Justice and Healing Council, expressed his disappointment in the Catholic church. No senior church figures attended.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/dec/14/sexual-abuse-of-children-still-continuing-in-institutions-warns-royal-commission-head?

The issue of childcare remains a massive barrier to work for women

While 29% of women suggested that it was very important that they be able to work “school hours” – which would enable dropping off and picking up children – only 8% of men suggested that was a very important incentive for them to return to work.

The barriers to work are only for those who actually are seeking either more hours or a return to the workforce. Most people who are not in the workforce or who are employed are quite happy with that situation.

Just 0.6% of men who are not in the workforce and who do not wish to be so cite caring for children as the main reason, compared with 14% of women.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/grogonomics/2017/dec/12/no-more-nappy-valley-but-childcare-still-an-issue-for-working-women?

How an Australian-born grassroots movement won the Nobel Peace Prize

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, now based in Geneva, is a coalition of grassroots non-government groups in 100 countries and has fought for a global treaty banning nuclear weapons. It is the first Australian Nobel Laureat for Peace, recognised for it “groundbreaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition”.

In July this year 122 countries signed a UN treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons, the first legally binding international agreement to prohibit nuclear weapons. But the signatories do not include any of the nuclear powers, nor many of their close allies.

This was replicated at the award ceremony in Norway on Sunday in what was described an “ambassador boycott“. Russia was the only declared nuclear power with a top diplomat present.

“Australia claims to be committed to a world without nuclear weapons and here’s an Australian-born campaign that has won the Nobel peace prize for the fight against nuclear weapons; it seems a bit silly that they can’t even congratulate us,” Fihn said.

Australia has refused to support the ban treaty and prefers to rely on the protection of the United States nuclear umbrella and the nuclear nonproliferation treaty.

https://womensagenda.com.au/latest/australian-born-grassroots-movement-won-nobel-peace-prize/

‘Get naked if you like’: the Australian working holiday from hell

Stoner found her time working in rural Australia punctuated by intimidation and degrading incidents at the hands of male farmers. At one isolated farm a middle-aged farmer suggested she and her friend Elle Kerridge should pick fruit naked. At another, more disturbing forms of harassment occurred.

Foreign backpackers are particularly vulnerable to exploitation because they must spend 88 days in a rural area in order to secure a second year on their working holiday visas. A whole industry of hostels offering job services has sprung up as a result of the policy. But it has also meant that workers, particularly female workers, are prepared to endure harassing and even illegal behaviour to secure their second year here.

Now studying film-making at University of Lincoln, Stoner has decided to return to Australia to make a documentary on the topic. She’s raising money on an incubator site and working on pre-production of 88 Days, the working title of her project. She hopes to be back in Australia in time to film in the fruit-picking season.

A major study released last month by three Sydney universities, based on responses to an online survey by 4,322 foreign temporary workers, found workplace exploitation was “endemic and severe”.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/dec/10/get-naked-if-you-like-the-australian-working-holiday-from-hell?

New South Wales closes Australia’s last loophole allowing pregnant women to be sacked

New South Wales will close a loophole allowing employers to sack a woman who knew she was pregnant when hired.

The premier, Gladys Berejiklian, said the changes would make sure pregnant woman were not discriminated against.

“It’s unacceptable and out of step with modern standards for a woman to be overlooked for a role because she’s pregnant, or dismissed from a new position once it becomes apparent she’s carrying a child”.

The NSW government acknowledged Greens MP Dr Mehreen Faruqi who had been a fierce advocate for changing the laws.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/dec/10/new-south-wales-closes-australias-last-loophole-allowing-pregnant-women-to-be-sacked?

‘It’s not just about the Weinsteins’: how do we fix the gender problem in Australian film?

The fight against gender disparity, which has underpinned the status quo for decades, has shifted from the margins to the mainstream in five short years – and now it’s driving policy.

Several powerful industry figures have helped lead this change. Producer Sue Maslin, financing the Dressmaker in 2012, refused to give up when told the film’s audience was “limited because it was heavily skewed to females.” It became the highest grossing Australian film of 2015/16, earning $20.28 million at the box office and proving “once and for all there was a business case to be made for a film by and about women, targeted to a female audience,” Maslin told Guardian Australia.

Actor Cate Blanchett, accepting the 2014 Oscar for Blue Jasmine, reminded Hollywood that films with female protagonists “make money”. Her comment briefly ruffled the Twitter-verse, before the Geena Davis Institute backed it with proof: of the 100 top-grossing non-animation movies of 2015, those with female leads made 15.8% more money than those with male leads – despite comprising only 17% of the list.

In her first day on the job in 2015, Screen NSW CEO Courtney Gibson introduced the “50:50 by 2020” target across the agency’s development and production arms. According to Create NSW, the policy has since put 150 female filmmakers in contact with previously unreachable distributors, and seen female TV drama directors rise from 18% to 47% in two years.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/dec/10/its-not-just-about-the-weinsteins-how-do-we-fix-the-gender-problem-in-australian-film?

Arizona congressman to resign after discussing child surrogacy with female staffers

The congressman’s statement said he deeply regretted that his discussion of surrogacy in the workplace “caused distress”, but he left unclear the circumstances of the discussion. A source familiar with the allegations said that Franks asked two female staffers who worked for him at the time to be surrogate mothers for his child. Franks’s office refused to comment on that issue.

He also shared details about the difficulties he and his wife had had conceiving a child, including three miscarriages and two failed attempts to adopt a child before a “wonderful and loving lady” acted as a gestational surrogate for their twins. He said the process was a “pro-life approach that did not discard or throw away any embryos”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/07/arizona-congress-trent-franks-resigns-sexual-misconduct?

Never again: can the royal commission help make our children safe?

To date, not one person has been convicted in Australia for the crime of concealment of child sexual abuse.

Research funded by the royal commission and led by Donald Palmer from the University of California’s sociology department uncovered the organisational culture that exists when children are abused. Palmer found six features conducive to the perpetration of child abuse, one of them being macho cultures where leadership positions are filled by men.

“However, in private sector organisations, men tend to fill upper-level management positions,” the report found. “Further, in the not-for-profit sector, men tend to fill upper-level management positions, while women fill lower-level staff positions There is no evidence to suggest that the situation is any different in organisations that deliver services to children and young people. As a result, it may be that many detected instances of child sexual abuse fail to trigger a robust institutional response simply because they are observed by women and communicated to men. In patriarchal societies, men are assumed to possess strong sexual impulses and their pursuit of sexual gratification is viewed positively and considered normative.”

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/dec/09/never-again-can-the-royal-commission-help-make-our-children-safe?