Bill pushes equal custody - National - theage.com.au

Bill pushes equal custody - National - theage.com.au: "Where it is not in the child's best interests and where it is not practical, the court must consider giving non-resident parents 'substantial and significant time' with the child. The Government will also amend the existing definition of family violence to make clear that a fear of violence must be 'reasonable'. This is in response to concerns that false claims of violence can be a way of denying access to children. The bill also inserts a presumption of 'equal' shared parental responsibility in important decisions — a hardening of earlier wording that called for 'joint' parental responsibility. A spokeswoman for Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, said: 'The Government has recognised you can't divide a child 50/50. But we wanted to make sure parents could spend substantial and significant time with their children and they weren't just Disneyland dads or Movie World mums.' .. The national president of the the Lone Fathers Association of Australia, Barry Williams, congratulated Mr Ruddock 'for his persistence in this'. He said the court should only be able to stop equal time if a parent was proven to be a danger to a child. 'We don't just want mere allegation … we mean being charged and convicted.'"