I believe from personal experience that the existing family court process works. As someone who has lived in domestic violence while without children, pregnant, and then with children, I am the first to understand the very really fear of having the sense of mind and then courage to leave that situation.
When my defacto partner initiated the Family Law process my initial thought was frustration and anger - to think that the Australian Government tells me that 'To Violence Against Women Australia Says No' and yet i was starting a process that was going to order me to put my child back in that situation.
I am so happy and encouraged to say that that has never happened. Throughout my whole experience of the police/local court/family court, me and my child have felt safe, protected, listened to and supported.
I also believe that I and my child have had such a postive experience with the entire process due to the fact that I have not allowed my fear to get in the way of doing what the police, government, and God has expected and asked of me as a mother and part of the general public.
It can work.

I would have to say that Forced Shared Parenting was an absolute disaster amongst the rest of the reforms lobbied by abusers rights groups. On the surface, it appeared to be a caring and sharing ideal, but underneath it was corrupt and directed at harming mothers, particularly victims of domestic violence and child abuse. Naturally, when mothers are harmed, the children endure this too. Fathers Rights groups state that the Family Court appears to favor mothers in proceedings based upon the high population of single mothers. For not even a decade in the entire history of marriage and family law, mothers were considered in favor as primary carers. Apart from that, children and mothers were under the control and "care" of fathers. I have not seen one bit of evidence that suggests that any of the mothers groups would want to cut the fathers out of the picture. The only ones that need to be kept at an arms length are those who are seeking contact for the wrong reasons - To abuse. Most victims of domestic violence don't ask for no contact, despite evidence suggesting that children witnessing even the mental abuse aspects of family violence can have problems later on in life. Most victims just want supervised contact and the court has denied a majority of applications, resulting in further victimization of family members. At one stage of the shared parenting laws, a child advocate who had been very active in supporting families noticed that they had not seen one father rejected for unsupervised contact.
There has always been a problem with abuse and family law, but the shared parenting had exacerbated the situation to an intolerable situation. For those who do not experience violence are struggling still with the rigid routines and no place to call home. It is no different to the instability experienced by transient families who have become homeless. If moving place to place, week by week was so attractive, then why is it that adults avoid such arrangements themselves? Even adults in the high income bracket have one home and a holiday house that they may visit once every few months or even yearly. This is because such routines leave a person rattled and disorientated. It was a thoughtless bill that had only the consideration so that fathers had a gateway to full custody and were able to maintain control over her and the children. It violates Human Rights "Freedom to roam" and the right to the dissolution of marriage. The only difference between the shared parenting bill and a marriage contract is that there is no sexual involvement(unless it occurs forced without witnesses). It also fully enables abusive men to stalk her through the courts and use the children as a tool to intimidate and punish her for leaving. The current laws allows this and the amount of evidence required to prove otherwise is more than what is required to convict a murderer.

The law changes in 2006 addressed family violence. Despite what the critics say, the judge can defeat the presumption of equally shared parental responsibility if abuse and violence feature.
If violence is allowed to go unheeded then it is failure of the administration of the law to take the necessary protective action.
What we don’t want to see return to court practice is the wholesale denial of shared time or denial of any contact at all on the flimsiest of allegations. I have come across many men over the years who are not allowed to contact their children until they reach 18 years of age on the basis of untested and unproven allegations.
So the court has a duty under section 60K of the Act to address these concerns within an 8 week period.
If violence is happening then the proper venue for dealing with this is the police.
Also the court will not punish anyone who makes statements in good faith.

A major problem with the debate coming from divorce industry insiders is the speed with which divorcing parents are pathologised and tagged with violence. The most common anger to surface during court proceedings is due to denial of contact. Many fathers and some mothers report that the other parent deliberately withholds access to their children. The fear of losing a child, the grasping to stay connected, can cause tempers to fray. The adversarial court process is itself the greatest source of angst for many parents. Rather than calm parents it causes conflict to escalate. We need more marriage counseling and mediation to help parents through their ordeal, not Orwellian judgments separating parents and child. In reality these mums and dads are fit parents who need our understanding, not policies of segregation. The greatest injury is done to children by segregating them from their mother and father. The Stolen Generation is all the evidence we need that segregation of a child from a parent does immeasurable harm.

The Family Court applies a blunt legal instrument to solving a very human problem. The advocates of sole mother custody want fathers removed entirely. We need to call into question any system that attempts to render co-operative parenting after divorce as non-viable. Advocates of abortion and divorce laws promoted the idea that the human fetus could be nonviable and that separation meant the marriage was over and divorce inevitable. We know differently. We know that many aborted babies were viable human beings. We know that many strained marriages could have been saved but instead were channeled to dissolution through the divorce machine. We also know that parenting can continue after divorce; though the family is divided it remains a family and children still love their mum and dad. Pray for a pro-life attitude to the viability of parenting and sharing the parenting for these families divided and living in two homes. Ask God to bless the children and heal the divisions and hurting hearts.