Annual report [1997-98] - Family Court of Australia

The Family Court of Australia – annual report 1997-98
should be based on solid evidence that those services could be improved by different
administrative arrangements.
‘To Have and to Hold’concentrated mainly on the methods available for supporting relationships
and preventing their breakdown. It recognised that the Court’s services are, by
necessity, directed at the acute needs of couples who have decided to separate, and that the
focus of these is therefore different from the marriage and relationship counselling/therapy
offered by the community-based organisations. For this reason it recommended that the
Court’s conciliation counselling services be re-named as separation counselling services.
The report considered the Court’s PDR services to be an integral part of its operations and
recommended that they remain a part of it.
Judicial training
Queenscliff seminar
Anumber of judges and judicial registrars attended a training seminar in early April at
Queenscliff in Victoria. The seminar enabled several newly appointed judges to participate
in a forum at which papers were delivered on topics such as adversarial procedures, unrepresented
litigants, gender awareness, simplified procedures and judgment writing.
Cooktown workshop
Those judges and judicial registrars who work in registries where there are likely to be
indigenous customers were provided with training in Cooktown in late April 1998. One aim
of the workshop was to promote the Court’s ongoing development of initiatives and strategies
to assist Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to access its services in a way that
best meets their needs. Representatives of indigenous communities were able to meet with
Court staff and discuss a range of issues related to families and to consider how the Court’s
services and procedures may best be adapted to better service the needs of indigenous families
and communities. With the appointment of two family consultants for Far North
Queensland, the workshop also helped promote awareness of the consultants and their role.
Delay reduction programs
The Court is most concerned that delays in the settlement of final hearings have, if anything,
increased over the year in review, particularly in Melbourne, Newcastle, Adelaide and
Brisbane. This has occurred despite the efforts in a number of registries in both the northern
and southern areas to reduce waiting times by running particular delay reduction programs.
Such efforts are usually successful in the short term, but require a huge effort from already
overworked judges and staff and a major injection of resources. Moreover, they can provide
no more than ‘band aid’solutions to what is an inherent structural problem.
The difficulties have been exacerbated by delays in the replacement of retiring judges and
a failure by the Government to implement the Court’s proposal that part-time judges be
appointed to cope with backlogs and periods of judicial illness and long leave. In the major
registries an increasing volume of interim matters requiring determination can only be met
by judges sitting in discrete duty lists, thereby compounding delays in the listing of final
hearings. The Court has recently proposed that senior registrars be granted additional delegated
powers in order to allow them to hear interim parenting applications.
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