FATHERS FORUM
21 JANUARY 2003

PRESIDENT:			Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, if I could have a bit of order.  It is certainly a pleasure to welcome you all here today and up front. Can I say that I am very pleased to see so many of my parliamentary colleagues here.  Unfortunately, most senators can't attend but I am very pleased to see the Deputy President, John Hogg, here, as well as Roger Price, Kerry Bartlett, Mark Latham, Ken Ticehurst, Ross Cameron, Michael Morgan and Cameron Thompson.  Thank you all for attending.  

Congratulations to the Fatherhood Foundation for having the courage and commitment to carry through this project.  In particular, I would like to pay a special tribute to the hard work of Warwick Marsh and Richard Yiap, very much so, for organising today.  I am sure we are all keen to hear from you what has come out of today's efforts.  We look forward to the First National Summit on Fatherhood in August later this year.  May it be a great success and lead to the betterment of Australian fathers across this country.  

This evening I want to give you briefly just some of my thoughts about the relationship between fathers and children; about the importance of communication, which of course is known as a two-way street.  I stand here today as a father, but more particularly a grandfather.  A parent's life is filled with many contradictions, opposites, rights with opposites, rights and wrongs, approval and disapproval, some successful times and other times not so successful.  

But there should be no opposite to the love of a father or mother for their children.  I believe the importance of love and respect in a family can never be under estimated.  But, sadly, a good beginning does not always guarantee you a happy, successful life.  

I was recently at a drop-in centre in Hobart, a centre for young people who are going through difficult times in our city, and the young person I was talking to there was explaining how he was withdrawing from heroin addiction via a methadone replacement therapy.  He said, and I quote, 'My parents love me, don't think that they did not. I just tried drugs for a bit of fun and got hooked.'  Sadly, a good beginning is not always a good guarantee.  But, I do believe it gives you the best opportunity to be happy and successful.  

The writer Anthony Brandt put it well when he said 'Other things may change us but we start and end with the family.'  Fathers have an ongoing responsibility to educate their children and to pass on their collective wisdom to their families through the full range of their lives together.  But, we often don't communicate well enough for this to happen.  I said to Chris Miles today, one of our distinguished former members, along with Alastair Webster ;  I was reading the fathering book again, refreshing my memory, so I rang my son just to be on the safe side, because it is most important, 'Broken failed communication leads to broken failed lives.' 

I have learnt one thing in my life with my family - I have got three daughters and a son - daughters learn to borrow their best clothes from their mother and sons find the  best way to pinch your best wine.  We certainly communicated that well enough over the years.  The family is in fact the best form of communication there is, if and only when that communication is allowed to work.  

In the book I was talking about, Bruce Robinson's great book 'Fathering in the Fast Lane, he talks about switching the focus from our work back to our kids.  In that same book the Prime Minister, John Howard, said 'It is not a terribly revolutionary theory but it seems commonsense to me that, if you want to tell your children that they are important, the best way of doing it is to never be too busy when they want to talk to you.'

I think that's pretty good advice.  Sadly, I believe the modern world of the 21st Century has conspired to reduce the effectiveness of that communication.  The information revolution has made time together the most precious commodity in today's world.  The internet, email, globalisation and the information super highway have enabled millions of people to find out information about an infinite range of topics.  

It is so easy for me to stay in touch with my colleagues all around the world.  So why is it so hard for us to stay in touch with our families?  Why do we at times ignore the most important communication network of all, our own family?  Sometimes as fathers, this is one of our biggest failures.  It used to be the norm to sit down for dinner with our children.  Now it is the battle of the diaries to get perhaps one night together.  It was in fact Confucius who said 'Being the strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.'  So, dear friends, the value of the family can often be obscured in our modern world, but I call on us here today to make a pledge to our sons and our daughters to renew that family love, to strengthen those loving bonds and to switch the focus from our work back to our kids and make communication a two-way street.  

Let's all help Australian fathers to be the best dads they possibly can be.  Thank you all for being here.  

APPLAUSE 

Can I ask the Parliamentary Secretary for the Minister for Family and Community Services, Ross Cameron, to say a few words and support my remarks. I am sure you would like to.  

MR CAMERON:			Thanks very much, Mr President, my parliamentary colleagues, former colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. Firstly, I would congratulate the Fatherhood Foundation for getting such a great mix of representatives and for providing leadership in this area throughout the community, but also to get the group of parliamentarians you have during Senate Estimates where we have members from the democratic house and the less democratic house. We have Liberal, we have Labor, we have got the first Green in the House of Representatives, all identifying with this cause.  

I think that says something about its importance.  I guess I would say it is great where we can, something that brings us all together at a time in which there is great dissension and acrimony in this place.  I guess I ought to also say, I am speaking because of this title of Parliamentary Secretary, Family and Community Services; not because I have any particular sort of credentials as a father.  We run these various programmes within my department, helping fathers. And I think you have seen the booklet.  

I was going to a function, leaving one morning, the car was waiting for me, a couple of kids were crying. The nappies needed to be changed, and my wife said 'Where are you going?' I said 'I am going to address a function on the resources available to families in crisis'.  The predictable response was was 'Well just a sec, I am getting ready, can I come?'  

I have to tell you that I think the risks of talking about fatherhood can be a bit of a contest to say 'I care more about fatherhood than the next bloke,' but the reality is every bloke around this table is here because they care about their kids.  If we were to form a queue from the best father to the worst I suspect I know which end of the queue I would be on.  But I know intuitively that there are very few subjects we could be discussing today that are of greater importance to Australia.  

We don't need someone to do a PhD thesis on whether or not fathering is important to the next generation of young Australians.  I guess I would - I congratulate Warwick and all of you for for being here, for in a sense, taking the obvious but so often neglected and making it front and centre.  I appreciate the leadership that President Paul Calvert has provided in making it possible in this forum.  

The three great areas where we face challenges are, number one: all the research is showing that a large group of young Australian men never intend to become fathers.  It is about a quarter and it is rising and in every age cohort, more men than women say they intend never to have children.  Now, in the history of civilisations I suspect this is a fairly recent and quite a unique phenomenon.  It says mathematically we will end not with a bang but a whimper, when we look around for the last child.  

In parts of Japan today they actually have governments commission statues of children so people won't forget what they look like.  So getting to I guess, creating the sort of community where young men think 'I want to be a father,' that's important.

Secondly, how do we support parents, fathers, to be better at what they are already doing?  Again, it is one of those things where there is no real pre-qualification - you know you have to get a licence to drive a car; you don't have to have a licence to have a child, and most of us are just learning as we go along.  

We inherit some good things, some bad, from our own fathers.  Looking at how we help fathers doing it now and finally working out what we do for blokes whose relationships have broken up with children involved. I think there are a very significant proportion of them - there are a number of pockets of enormous stress in this community and this is one of them.  I am not going to open the can of worms of what contribution the Commonwealth makes to it in terms of the architecture of the Family Law Act, but suffice it to say there are a lot of men who want to see their kids, but at the moment who are really virtually unable to see their kids.  So, I just want to say I think you are scratching an itch.  I think there is no more important task and I wish you well.  

APPLAUSE

PRESIDENT:			I think now, if you could bear with me, there is your ten - I told Warwick if he got ten politicians here today it would be a miracle.  Well, he has got ten.  

APPLAUSE 

PRESIDENT:			That's the Party Whip, John Forrest, thank you.  We now have a brief report by Richard Yiap on what has happened today and what is going to happen in the future.  Then perhaps our political friends here would like to ask some questions or say a few words while we are all assembled.  Richard, it is over to you.  

MR YIAP:				Thank you, Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, my privilege now is to report to you the outcomes of today and to maybe find that for us it is historic, because in the sense that we have been able to gather together a wide spectrum of people who are working on the subject of fatherlessness.  We all agree that fatherhood is in crisis and it's a situation that must must be addressed.  

We talked over a range of issues. We had everyone speak for five minutes, then what we did was to break up into category groups, in various categories, to try and come together with some big picture issues.  It is time we started the process because we have got a long way to go, a lot of hard work ahead of us. Why, because fatherlessness is not a cause, it's a symptom of multiple causes.  

Fatherlessness now is such a big problem that it is looked upon as a gigantic monumentous problem that needs to be tackled. What we are trying to do as a group is to share views and come to a collective consensus as to where to go.  So, an issue that came across that really touched a similar chord with us was the rate of men's suicide.  That situation is extremely chronic because the statistics indicate that it is higher than the road toll.   So we believe that it is something that needs much greater national focus.  

We also feel that legislation can be improved. Going into details is not appropriate, but what the honourable member, Ross Cameron, mentioned, was the fact that the Family Law Act needs review.  We also believe that the Anti Discrimination Act needs review.  

We looked at men's needs over a whole range.  We agreed that these areas need greater focus and men today across the spectrum of society need help in many ways.  There is a significant spread of hopelessness in many sectors of our community.  We looked at disadvantaged men in terms of mental disorders, incarceration with imprisonment, drug and alcohol abuse.  

We heard a wonderful profile of what Teen Challenge is doing in this particular area and we looked at the effects briefly of fatherlessness from these men in disadvantaged areas and how the link and tie is extremely strong.  The education training area, as the honourable member, Ross Cameron, mentioned again, is very important in terms of promoting family.

We all believe that we should have a family week in Australia.  I think it would be really good to have a national focus to celebrate family week.  Also we had a mothering campaign that was extremely successful.  Why don't we have a Fathering Be In It campaign in terms of promoting fatherhood?  

Certainly the lowering of the fertility rate in our nation presents the nation with significant problems in the future.  It's a very scary one and something that needs to be addressed in terms of turning the tide.  

We are here today and we hope to come back again in August and this time to actually put some building blocks together of the framework from which we can move forward.  we can talk a lot and not get a lot done but we need to actually focus on what the next step is. We have had some discussion now amongst ourselves to clarify some of our views, but in the short space of time it is very difficult to clear the communication channels to see the way together.  

So, as part of the process, we are going to be talking among ourselves from now. We hope to set up perhaps an internet chat forum where we can explore these issues.  We intend to keep people fully informed of what we are doing and then the next stage would be a conference, but this time with more practical workshops to actually put things into place that we can move forward with.  

In the future we see it necessary to have a National Fatherhood Summit whereby we involve people from all sectors of the community, the entire sector to come in.  Perhaps maybe out of that we may have what the Americans have at the moment, which is a National Fathering Institute, that oversees the issue of fathering and families, et cetera. 

So we are excited and privileged to be here.  We thank you for your support and your encouragement, as well as your hospitality and your generosity in providing the services, and we see this as a pivotal step in the future of our nation. Thank you very much.  

APPLAUSE

PRESIDENT:			This session is an open forum. My parliamentary colleagues, if you have any comments to make or questions to ask, now is the time to do it.  

MR TICEHURST:		I am Ken Ticehurst, the member for Dobell.  It came to my notice last year that we have this problem with men's suicide.  I had a visit from Dads in Distress.  About that time I had also come across a couple of issues personally where men were denied access to their children because of family law problems, child support issues, and so I decided to do something about it and the first thing I did was raise it in our party room, which is a great forum for backbenchers to really get some issues raised. 

We had a lot of support from our members.  I was encouraged then to go on and to set up a group, to set up a forum where we could actually bring people down who had the problem and address members and senators. We did this very successfully last year.  Out of that we have moved on to have a regular meeting each time Parliament sits.  

In fact, this is the time that we would have been doing it today but because of your forum here we thought it was more important for us to come and attend here, meet you people and see what some of your issues are.  We are moving forward to try and do something about the child access problem.  

The whole family law thing is a huge problem and there is no way you can wave a wand or do whatever to try and solve it.  But if we can make a start and make a move to improve the situation with access to children then I think we will have achieved something. So we are working on that.  It is interesting to see that you guys are coming together, you have got certainly a great team of people here today and I think by trying to get everybody working in the one direction we should be able to achieve something.  

APPLAUSE

PRESIDENT:			Are there any other colleagues who would like to make a comment or ask some questions?  Mark?  

MR LATHAM:			I might just talk about the things I am interested in and ask a question as to where we go from here.  I suppose from my perspective I am interested in the question of good fathering practices and father-son relationships, but I also think there is a broader issue about male identity in our society.  A lot of men are struggling with issues and it flows over into depression, suicide, all sorts of difficulties, because of the changing nature of male identity.  

We live in a fast changing world and many of the old sources of male identity have been lost and it is not too clear; not many people are talking about the things that could replace those old points of identity and security for our place in society.  For instance, men traditionally took identity from the physical nature of work but now with the revolution in information technology and the services sector that form of identity has been lost. Men traditionally had the role as a provider in the nuclear family.  The nuclear family is not as strong as it was and the traditional role is not as clear. 

I think the third area of identity was the great Australian institution of mateship which has also been through a lot of changes and perhaps in terms of male loyalty it is not as strong as it used to be.  So, I think the father-son relationship is worth promoting because it is an important source of identity; it's a sense of belonging; it's a responsibility; it's a role that can uniquely be discharged by men in our society and, as a member of Parliament who hears a lot of issues about Family Support Agency and family law, I think the real challenge is not so much to see it as a win-loss scenario where men can only win at the expense of women.

Sure, the femininst movement has made a lot of advances in the last 20 or 30 years but I don't think the men's movement should be designed to roll that back, rather than just fill the gap with the male identities, male roles, the culture of our society with respect to the contribution of fathers and how we can turn those cultural changes into better public policy.  I think we have to look for win-win outcomes.  

What I am interested in really is to see the emergence of a policy think tank, a lobby group, a group of advocates who can even out the balance.  As a member of Parliament I am seeing a lot of good material coming through from the women's movement.  The quality of material from the men's side of the argument is really only starting to emerge.  We do need effective lobbyists and advocates who can ensure that in the diversity of our democracy all the various views and needs can be heard and then acted on.  

So, my point really is to encourage the formation of a group that really lobbies, advocates, researches, puts forward ideas about improving the Family Law Act, the Child Support Agency, what we can be doing to improve fathering practices and the culture of our society and to even out that imbalance, whether we like it or not, as emerged over the last 20 or 30 years.  

So, I am a real believer in what everyone is talking about here today at a personal level, but also as the representative in the south-west of Sydney, where there are a lot of young families, a lot of men going through some terrible times and challenges.  So I wish you all the best for the future and would urge you to come together as a group that place that important role around this building and achieve many great things for our country.  

APPLAUSE 

PRESIDENT:			Michael, did you want to make a comment? 

MR BAKER:			Yes, following on from my colleague, basically I think most members of Parliament, most members of local areas, such as myself, are finding there is a major problem in our community. We have had a lot of representations in the last couple of months from various people suffering at the hands of the Family Law Court. We talked about the Anti Discrimination Act.  When I was listening I wrote down a few questions that were going through my mind based on my own experience.  I was wondering whether we think the current generation of men are doing better or worse than the previous generation. 

I think, based on my personal experience, I put a lot more effort into being a father based on the experience I have had from my own father who wasn't there a lot, so I think we are trying a lot harder. A lot of people are trying to be better fathers based on all the information that's come up over the last couple of generations.  What have we learnt?  What are we good at at the moment?  What are we not so good at at the moment?  

These are are some questions you can ask.  These are the things that make people really good at the moment, but these are not so good. I think the problem with the individual male is the environment around us.  If it is the environment around us, more stresses, which is going to, I assume, get worse how are we going to keep up with all these changes, all these stresses?  If we are moving ahead, these stresses are just keeping ahead of us. We are always chasing our tails about some of these issues.  I have got a lot of questions I suppose like a lot of people around the table.  As parliamentarians we are here to provide some answers as well as ebullient and clear directions from your group as to exactly how we can do can best do that.  Congratulations on today.  

APPLAUSE

PRESIDENT:			Kerry Bartlett.

MR BARTLETT:			I would just like to make two comments if I could, first of all in relation to my colleague from Parramatta.  I think the Family Court issue is a can of worms that does need to be opened.  

MR BAKER:			Absolutely.

MR BARTLETT:			We will never stop the human tragedy if you like of families coming unstuck, and marriages breaking down, but my fear is the way the Family Law Act works at the moment it makes it easier for that process to occur, which is one problem, and, secondly, it intensifies the suffering and the pain that occurs as a result of that because of the implications - first of all the financial burden it has created by the way the child support system works and, secondly, the pain that occurs because of lack of access and inadequate implementation of accessing arrangements.  I think the way the family law system exacerbates the problem of increased family break down - I think we as legislators have a real challenge there to come to grips with that. 

The second area of my interest in this is regarding the impact that it has on boys.  Just at the end of last year the Education Committee, of which I am the Chair, received a report on boys' education and the under achievement of boys and the growing disparity between the achievement of boys and girls through school, university, employment - the whole lot.  

On almost any indicator in school and after school boys are not doing as well as girls, and that disparity seems to be growing.  There is a complexity of reasons why that is the case and there is no simple solution, but one of the factors that came through in the evidence presented to the committee was the lack of positive male role models for children and particularly the negative impact that that has on boys with a growing number of families now - the growing number of children now growing up in single parent families and with 90 per cent of those single parent families being without a male role model there is a real problem there for boys.

Particularly that problem is exacerbated by the fact that they, a lot of them, are going through primary school without even having a male teacher and many of the other areas where boys might have grown up with a positive male influence as well - be it scouts or their local sporting club or Sunday school, or whatever else they were involved in - many of those contacts are not there.  

Increasingly you are having boys growing up without a male from whom they can model their own behaviour and their own aspirations. That's having an increasingly negative impact on their education achievement which then has repercussions out of school in terms of self confidence, in terms of anti-social behaviour, in terms of success in employment, in careers and so on.

That then starts to very develop into a vicious circle because you have got then young men growing up disengaged, feeling alienated, lacking in motivation, confidence and achievements and that has a negative impact I think then on their ability to father and to father successfully.  I think we have got a real problem here that potentially is getting worse.  I don't think the government can legislate to change all that.  

I think our job is to try where we can to do that. I think we can try and make sure legislation doesn't make the problem worse, but there is a social problem there as well; communication is big part of that.  I think that is a lot of what you and programmes such as yours are doing and the network that you have back in the community.  We need to do our part but really this communication of the pivotal importance of fatherhood is a job that you are doing and I encourage you to keep doing it.  

APPLAUSE

PRESIDENT:			Thanks, Kerry.  We are rolling along pretty well. Do any of our other colleagues wish to make some comments?  Senator John Hogg?

SENATOR HOGG:		Just briefly - unfortunately when you get to this stage in a long speech you find that most of what you want to say has been covered but I am going to be relatively brief, but I think there are a number of issues that need to be addressed, particularly that issue that was just raised by Kerry about the lack of role models, male role models in the teaching area.  

That's very pronounced in our society today, but one of the things that concerns me that is ever dominant in this whole area is the role of the media.  I think the role of the media needs to be scrutinised very carefully because I find in many instances the media failed to play a positive role in promoting parenting and, in particular, fatherhood, because they see it, they want to portray all the negative aspects rather than portray all the positive aspects.  It seems that unless one can win the support of the media then one is still going to fight an uphill battle.  

But they are prepared to do a one-off event such as Fathers Day, because that has a nice little emotional attachment to it, but part apart from that the ordinary everyday mundane struggles that fathers go through, and they do go through some real struggles, they are just put to one side, just swept to one side.  

The other area which hasn't been touched on though is the area of the organisation of work in our society.  Of course there are many families out there today where neither the father nor the mother has ever experienced full-time employment.  They don't know what it is for the family to gain some sort of sustentation out of full time employment.  The family has been, because of the way that work is organised in our society, dependent on some form of social security or welfare and that to me is something else that needs to be tackled and understood by this group. 

Once upon a time, as my colleague Mark Latham alluded to, males were seen as having the capacity and the roles of bringing in the income for the family.  That has long since gone. I am not asking for those days to be revisited, but none-the-less the issue of work, organisation and the effect that that has on not just the male children in the family but also the females is very important indeed. So, I commend that to you as well.  I look forward to the work of your organisation and feel free to contact me.  

APPLAUSE 

PRESIDENT:			Any other takers?  John Forrest, I saw some movement there.  

MR FORREST:			I had an opportunity earlier in the day to talk to most of the group, but I just offer my encouragement.  I found this particular subject a fairly lonely road.  For the nine years I have been here I have provided personal support to fathers in the position and 
discussing - one thing in particular comes to mind, only a few months 
ago - my part of the world has been ravaged by massive drought and, at one moment, I found myself in a paddock with a 37 year old young farmer with rifle loaded and cocked, pointed at his chin.  The pressure he was under was severe and by some miracle just sitting there and talking I persuaded him to remove it and uncock it.

He was driven by this intense need to succeed.  I merely persuaded him there were more important things, a young family. But we had a long discussion after that and one of the things that he said to me clearly was something he said 'You know, you are right,' and he talked about his children aged between 6 and 13, and he said 'The one thing that we never receive any training for is on the most important thing we can ever do, and that's to be a parent.'  He said 'I even have to have a licence for the gun' he was holding, 'a licence to drive a car, and I can't even go fishing without one' and yet on this issue, which is probably the most central one, in terms of society, in terms of the future, no guidance at all other than those who are fortunate enough to have had good parenting themselves. I am one of those, I cherish the opportunity I had in the formative years with a grandfather who was there because he had the time and then my own father after that did a really good job.  

They were a really good positive influence.  It doesn't mean I get it right but it highlights to me the issues.  So I stand ready to help the group with the importance of the issues.  The variety of people you have got together - I guess that's to your credit, Warwick.  

Paul, I congratulate you too in providing the leadership as the President of the Senate - the status.  I really hope that you can succeed, once a couple of those items are before you it gives the group some status.  I really hope we can proceed with what some of those items are about.  Once some of those items are written down, I will be looking forward to a summit where we can progress the matter.  

APPLAUSE

PRESIDENT:			I must say the Speaker also has been very supportive and unfortunately he can't be here, but I am sure that he will be continuing his support as well.  Ross wanted to say something.  

MR CAMERON			Are you going to sit like a sage or -- 

MR THOMPSON:		With Mark, an earlier speaker, much of this ground has been gone over and I certainly do strongly support you. The point that Kerry made earlier about family law is something that appeals very strongly to me. I think it is something where the government really, we as a society, have got to confront the way we deal with family law and ensure that it is assisting with the problem and not potentially in some areas I think undermining some important aspect of our community. 

That's is something for down the track.  Right now the fact that there is a fatherhood group coming together to promote these issues is just so long overdue.  I give you credit for that and just express my support. I think you will have wide support among MPs, just because people, all MPs in the house aren't here doesn't mean, I don't think - they really do tune into this because I am sure every one of us here would tell you that we constantly get feedback about these issues and it would be something that would be on every member's agenda somewhere.

Feel free I think not only to pursue us and to enlist our support and to continue to enjoy it. Enjoy the support you get from us, but you will have the same thing coming from many other MPs.  I think you will find that their door will be open to you as well.  

APPLAUSE

PRESIDENT:			We do have right down the back a very new senator who is a very good father and works at it very hard.  I don't know whether, Richard, you want to say anything?

Richard Calvert:	Really having just come in I feel a little bit guilty about jumping up and saying something.  That's why I was sitting back quietly and taking in what my colleagues had to say. But reflecting on what has been said and the proposals that have been made, particularly by them, it almost seems to me that in some ways it is not fashionable to be male.  There are so many pressures that are applied and I think the proposal that Kerry made about groups such as this being important in putting a message out and providing that basis and for us getting legislation sorted out.

I don't think there is any question you will get strong support through the Parliament for a group such as this.  If not a whole raft there is certainly that feeling that this project is extremely important and all the parties make a cohesive - just reading through Fathering From The Fast Lane over the Christmas break opened my eyes to a whole heap of things with my kids.  So just in that one piece of documentation is something that is extremely important and of great value.  I am sure that as this group progresses, as I have said, you will have no problems getting support for a forum like this.  

APPLAUSE

PRESIDENT:			Thanks, Richard.  

SPEAKER:				Sorry, I confess my ignorance but I don't know Cameron's full name and I don't know Richard's full name.  

PRESIDENT:			Senator Richard Calvert from Tasmania and Cameron Thompson the member for Blair.  

We have now been joined by the Minister, Mr Larry Anthony, who is no stranger to most of you I would think.  I don't know whether Larry wants to say a few words or whether he was going to let his Parliamentary Secretary sum up.  

MR CAMERON:			The Secretary will sum up.  

PRESIDENT:			I thought that might be the case.  Good on you, Les.  

MR CAMERON:			You gave me the soft option there, but, Larry, thanks for being here.  I am getting a second bite at the cherry.  I will try to be brief.  I want to say three things, which is not I guess so much a summary as a bit of gratuitous practical advice. 

Firstly, I want to talk about the subject of agreement and of unity.  There are lots of things around here about which, for example, the members and senators violently disagree.  On the subject of Iraq I am a Tory  who can't say George Bush, right.  

But I am on the subject of fathering.  I have got my arms wrapped around everyone of my colleagues here and one of the things Mark Latham touched on was the sort of quality of the material coming from the sector, the advice we are getting. I just want to relate the fact that I had two different fathering groups approach me during the last election campaign and ask me to set up a meeting for some of my colleagues so that they could express their view.

Sure enough I got back.  I went to the head of the Backbench Committee. I said 'Can you create some time for us to do this?'  He said 'Sure.  We will put it in the programme.'  Then I said to the two guys who were leading the two different groups, 'Okay, we have got a short amount of time,' members of Parliament have short concentration spans at the best of times.  I said 'I want us just a punchy,  15 or 20 minute presentation and some time left for questions so the two of you just should just get together, agree on the core issues and then there is the time for presentation.'  

Well, two days later the phone call came back, 'We can't agree. We need to do two different presentations.'  All I want to say to you is you are doing something important, there is all the moths gathering around the flames, the wave is building behind you, the biggest risk you face in my opinion is not from the external environment, but it is about your capacity to work together, compromise, to focus on the core issues and not to care about who gets the credit. If you can do that you will be a very very powerful force.  

The second thing I would say which is a little bit sort of self interested, and that's this question about the role of the government in your strategy.  When you do things in this environment you can almost sort of smell the food trough of the Treasury.  Sometimes it can be very distracting, particularly when you hear there are various different causes who are benefiting from the largesse of the Commonwealth doling out various amounts of money.  

I can guarantee you that in 99 cases out of 100 because getting the benefit of that largesse is not going to be as good as the particular cause you are representing, at least in terms of your own thinking and your constituents and so forth, and I guess all I would say to you is whatever Commonwealth money you get, if you get any, you pay a very high price for.  You will have a large army of bureaucrats who are drafting vast contractual agreements and insisting on high levels of accountability, wanting to check your ideology, insisting on followup, supervision, transparency, accountability, audit reports.  

SPEAKER:				We will take it any way, Ross.

MR CAMERON:			I am just in a boring self interested way adumbrating that I wouldn't be building - if you have got a cause that's this powerful I just wouldn't be building - I am saying, I am sure Larry is very open minded guy.  I am the junior little cog in the wheel, but I just think my encouragement would be the more self reliance you have the better the spirit of the enterprise.  

The last thing I would say is I appreciated Richard's emphasis on practical action and next steps because there is that management principle that this can be a vast amount of diffuse activity.  It is only when you concentrate it down to a point when you put the nail on the mark and you bang it with a hammer; that's the only time it goes in.  So we are all looking forward to the next conference and I am sure we are happy to help in any way we can.  I am looking forward to seeing this collaboration continue - and not to really care who gets the credit if you get the results you are after. 

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PRESIDENT:			Ross, thank you so much and to all the senators and House of Representatives people who have joined us.  I thank those on the team, about 40 in total, let's give them all a clap everybody.  

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MR MARSH:			Of course, coming from Wollongong I was very excited to see Michael Morgan here and we are both working class heroes, we hope, and indeed this actually is really an issue, I believe, a modern issue of changing things from the grass roots.  We have had a great day.  

There are still a lot of things we have got to learn and I think your advice to us, Ross, is very very correct.  I was talking to a car salesman just on Wednesday and he gave me a bit of advice. It is unusual to get good advice from a car salesman, but he said 'You know, Warwick, it's a great man that can do something and not leave his mark.'  I am passionate about this issue.  I believe we need fathers like we need nothing else in Australia.  

We need fathers in the political role who will be statesmen first and politicians second.  We need fathers who will love their wives and love their kids more than their jobs, more than their careers.  We men are full of our ego and I guess that's one of the big dangers.  

We have been talking about having a summit and I was talking to Don at the back.  Wave your hand; where are you Don?  I was having a pizza with him last night and he said even the word 'summit' appeals to our male ego.  So, actually since we have been talking we have been thinking maybe we are not ready for a summit.  So, you won't be disappointed if it is not a summit but we will be here, I guarantee it, on 18 and 19 August.  

Please book it in your diaries now.  It will be in the main committee I understand.  

PRESIDENT:			That's something we have got to work out first, Warwick.

I am pleased to see our Speaker has joined us.  It is very nice to have you with us Neil, and thanks for your support. .  It was mentioned earlier.  I am glad with your busy schedule, that you were able to come. 

MR MARSH:			I think he should speak now, give him a moment.  It is very great to have him here.  

PRESIDENT:			I think I will let you finish, Warwick.

MR MARSH:			Okay, it is great to have you, Neil.  We do appreciate your support, because without your support and your support before we could not be here today and we are very thankful for that support.  But the way forward is to start to believe we have got a problem. I think all of us around the table know that there are some things going on in our society that aren't real good and know that fathers need help and as men we have got to admit we need help, which is probably one of the biggest things to put our hand up, but we are putting our hand up, but we do believe that together we can change history.  

Thirty 30 years ago we had 3,258 people dying on our roads every year. That was approximately 4.4 people per 1,000 kilometres travelled.  The States got together, the Federal Government got together, local government got together, the community got together and said 'We have got to do something about the road toll.'  Now it has dropped down to I think 1,758 last year or the year before, 2001, and that's come because people came up with a plan and they applied themselves over a 10, 20, 30 year period.

I believe the battle we are facing is a 10 or 20 year battle.  I am in it for at long haul.  I want to see Australian fathers become the best in the world.  I believe we can do it.  We have got the best sports men, why not the best fathers?  Let's make our mothers the same too because they are, I believe, wonderful.  I believe we have got a lot of dads - to answer your question if I can, and I am not sure that I am at the moment able to, but I do believe we have got a lot of wonderful dads in Australia.  I am one of these people that believe that - this is an empty cup - it is not a very good illustration but I pour water in it, it is half full, okay?  So we have got a lot lot of good things happening there. 

I do believe there is an improvement.  I have seen a lot of young dads wheeling their babies around in their prams and I, it touches me when I see that happen.  I get excited by it.  And I believe that we can change history; we can make our dads the best in the world and it is not because maybe they are, but because every child looks at his dad and says 'Heh, you’re the best dad in the world.'

And for every child that really is the purpose.  Of course, we need, as I said, reform in our Family Law Act.  It's a can of worms I know but we have got to get rid of that can of worms and we have got to get rid of those worms out of that thing.  We have got to straighten it out. I know it might take us years but we have got to put our hands to the plough and go for it because unless we do there is going to be many more men commit suicide, 1,000 a year are dying.  That's almost approaching the road toll. 

Of course, our suicide rate, two and-a-half thousand, a lot of that is related too to family breakups.  It is wonderful to be here, again thank you parliamentarians.  Thank you, Paul, for your kindness, Ross, Larry, and of course there are many others here.  I really believe that Mark is very committed to this cause of seeing dads elevated again and honoured just the same as mothers, but equally honoured and appreciated and together we can make a difference.  I want to say thank you so much.  

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PRESIDENT:			Mr Speaker, I did welcome our guests here earlier. I am just wondering whether you would like to support my remarks.  

THE SPEAKER (MR ANTHONY):		Mr President, of course I would like to support your remarks.  Parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen who have come here to support the Fathering Forum, and Warwick, I am happy to join the President in encouraging fathers to get together around Australia and to look for ways in which they do their jobs, and it's a task, all the responsibilities, and look at the way relationships work.  

I am speaking as a father who has become a grandfather.  The encouraging thing for me is that my oldest son is a much better father than I was when I was his age.  That's largely of course credit to his mother, to get to a situation where he can stand up and say his son is a better father, that's is exactly what his father thought he was.  I hope he will get that point as well. 

From my own perspective, the most important thing to offer young Australians I think is stability. I am not sure that fathers could presume the roles of mothers but I do think we need to get the point at which children know that in the relationship there is real stability.  If that means one of the members of the family is better than the other, so be it.

If that's what is necessary to maintain in Australia that every child is entitled to a stable relationship*** on both***geographic stability into our relationships and encourage a lot of those things.  ***My children do as they reflect more of their mother's qualities  and their attitudes than ours.  I wish you well.  Fatherhood is very important.  The fundamental issue is stability in Australian families. 

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PRESIDENT:			Thank you Neil and to my parliamentary colleagues.  Once again, thank you for your support because that has really made so much difference to what happened here today.  I think the advice that's been given, the comments made around here tonight will go a long way to shaping the way in which you head towards the forum later in the year.  

That's something I will be talking to you about, making sure we organise it the best possible way and allowing as many people as possible to participate and to pursue what you are all trying to be doing with the advice of so many different people around this table.  

I think now the idea is to move up to the dining room for those of you who wish to have a meal up there.  I don't know what is the menu tonight and I don't know how much it is going to cost. But I can assure you I will be joining you for a short period, but I have another appointment tonight.  I wish you well with the rest of your deliberations and look forward to seeing you at a larger forum later in the year.  

Thank you. 

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