Merry Christmas

With special guests: 

• Sue Price
  
• Warwick Marsh
• Phillip York and
• Ed Dabrowski.  

Peace on earth and good will to all men. Here a number of the leading lights in Australia’s fatherhood movement wish everybody a Happy Christmas and give some sensible advice about how to deal with things at this time of year. Of course XMAS can be the worst time of year for some separated blokes who, thanksto the bastardy of Australia’s appalling family law system, are unable to see their children. All we can say is: buck up! With a bit of luck things will get better. And ironically, many blokes who have fought heroic battles to see their children through the anti-father bias of our family law system find that once they stop fighting, things begin to improve dramatically.

But it’s the festive season, the time to be at peace and to love your fellow man. Dads On The Air wishes you all best; with words of courage and encouragement from Phil York of Dads In Distress, Sue Price from the Men’s Rights Agency, Ed Dabrowski from the Shared Parenting Council of Australia and Warwick Marsh from the Fatherhood Foundation. Unfortunately Barry Williams from Lone Fathers was unable to make the show as he was catching a plane; but also wishes everybody the best of the season and also expresses his concern for the gathering anti-father backlash in family law.

Amazingly, the Rudd government looks determined to make Australia’s family law system even more hostile to fathers in the coming year, meaning that Christmas Day could be even more traumatic next year. Rudd has taken the old adage, never hold an inquiry unless you know the answer, to new heights, with multiple inquiries, all conducted by anti-shared parenting advocates, into the family law changes introduced by the former Howard government likely to produce predictable results.

None of the inquiries have made the slightest effort to consult fathers or fathers groups. The old dinosaurs of 1970s feminism are well entrenched in the family law system and its attendant bureaucracies; and are producing predictably nasty results. The Rudd government’s appointment of one of the most outspoken defendants of the ancient regime which saw the majority of separated dads denied any meaningful contact with their children, former Family Court judge Richard Chisholm - a man who has previously seen fit to ridicule separated dads at a family law conference and who has never hid his hostility to shared parenting or his support for our despised family law system - to head one of the inquiries into family law, provoked sighs of despair amongst family law reformers around the country. His conclusions, while so far kept hidden from the general public by the Attorney General’s Department’s failure to release it, is already claimed to be influencing increasingly anti-father anti-shared parenting judgements in the Family Court.

Dads On The Air thanks every one for their support throughout the year and all the best for the season.

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