Think the Family Court is a disaster now? Hanson would make it worse

Too many abortions in this country, said Pauline Hanson at the National Press Club on Wednesday. Next target? Childcare. And that was after her angry and predictable rant against multiculturalism.

Hanson’s views on family life in this country bear absolutely no relationship to what actually goes on in our homes.

My guess? Her “policies” would lead to far more stress and pain among our families. And what would happen next? More separation, more divorce.

What Hanson would do to the Family Court if, heaven forfend, she ever had untrammelled power is even worse. Hanson does not believe women. I don’t think she even believes in the experience of women. Take her position on the bullying of Victoria’s Premier Jacinta Allan.

What drives her? Here’s my view. In 2016, her son Adam made national headlines when he pleaded guilty in a Cairns court to breaching a domestic violence order. We can’t really know what happens in a family, but we do know this. Hanson’s views on the Family Court hardened.

Here’s what she told the Senate a year later: “Let me add in this debate that, apart from the many Australians that I meet when I move around Australia, this is a personal matter for me as a mother and as a grandmother. I’ve been through the court systems, and I’ve had to watch my sons go through the family law courts and how they were treated by their ex-spouses.

“I’ve seen DVOs put on them that were not warranted. I feel for the men out there that are going through this, because it’s unjustified. They have no recourse, they are missing seeing their children and they are devastated by it to the extent that they suicide. How many men do we know that suicide because of this? They are heartbroken.”

She’s provided no evidence of such suicides. She also claimed domestic violence orders are used as a tool by one parent to stop the other parent having access to their children. “Yes, it’s quite disgusting! Parents use their children as pawns and vengeance against the other parent. Often they are abusing our court process.”

UNSW law scholar Henry Kha is on the case. He says Hanson has had a significant rhetorical impact on the Family Court, at least in the popular imagination of many Australians, especially on men who complain about how they are treated by the court. She’s claimed women are liars. She doesn’t think children should have a voice in the process. And if she had her own way, god help us, she’d turn the court into a tribunal, fund it less, and insist men get equal time with their kids (which would be fine if they stopped beating the mother of those kids).

In oth