New Link: 10th Australian National Family Law Conference Melbourne, 16-20 March 2002

From a 2002 conference in Melbourne:

A Manifesto

The concept of parental responsibility is past its use-by date. It should be consigned to the dustbin of legal history, like the Roman law concept of paterfamilias. Society needs a new standard: that of family responsibility. By this I mean that family members should be responsible for each other and that the extent of the ‘bundle’ of rights accorded to each family member should depend on the degree of responsibility exercised in practice by each member, whether such responsibility is accepted voluntarily and lovingly or imposed by the law. The idea of family should be broadly defined to encompass disparate cultural and social models so that the general principle of family responsibility can be adapted pragmatically to specific circumstances.

A comparison of the legal standing of families and parents, de facto and step-parents, and the extended family. It is increasingly enlightening to see how the thinking has progressed over such a short time. The conclusions bring into sharp focus how Family Law has been changed and brought into Family Court practice.