Shared Parenting Paradigm

In order to understand how children in Australia are parented, and how they can be removed from their natural parents and placed with other carers, it is necessary to understand how the Australian system is structured.

We rely heavily on a social security system. Many of the services that are provided for families are provided by the state, whether directly, or through contract to private agencies. The state has a huge involvement in the lives of all Australians. Australia is a Nanny State. You virtually have no choice but to use services that are paid for by the state, and when the state pays they have a vested interest in your life as well as that of your children. And don’t they take advantage of that position.

When you give birth, you do so believing that your child is yours and you have autonomy over the way he or she is raised. To an extent this is correct, however it is governed by the Family Law Act 1975 which focuses on the rights of the child, and the responsibilities of the parent (1). Your children are not yours, well not in the way that you think. Only responsibility is bestowed upon you, and that responsibility is to ensure that your child has food, clothing, shelter, health care and education. In other words, all that is required to prepare your child for service to the state by way of consuming for the rest of his or her life. A parent has no rights in regard to their children, except to raise them according to their culture.

The important thing to look at is who is paying the bills, and this is where it is clear that parenting is shared between the state and the natural parents. There are definitely two parties involved and the graphic that is presented as part of this article shows the way that it works. It can only be this way because if one party (the state) believes that the other party (the parents) are neglecting a child, they begin a civil case against the parents.

In a survey I conducted in 2018, the majority of parents whose children had been forcibly removed by the state, in fact a staggering 95%, were partially or fully reliant on Centrelink payments for their income. This of course is for many reasons, and often due to one parent escaping domestic violence. This is regarded as a vulnerability as I wrote in How Your Children Are Stolen By The State (2). Contrast this with families where the primary income earner is a professional with a substantial income and the children attend a private school. These families often don’t make use of many state provided services. As well, if children are taken from these families they often have the resources and intelligence to fight child protection agencies.

All this, yet the Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1998 (NSW) states in Section 71(2) that:

The Children’s Court cannot conclude that the basic needs of a child or young person are likely not to be met only because of–
(a) a parent’s or primary care-giver’s disability, or
(b) poverty

Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1998 Section 71

So of course, what you see is a fabrication of cases by Departments of Child Protection in order to avoid this section of the Act. And this is the reason why parents are posting reviews of their case workers on this site, most not at all flattering or complementary. The mention of lies and perjury by these workers is beyond astounding, hardly the product of a fair and just system.

The main thing to remember, is that the more involvement the state has in your life, the more they pay for services for your family or your children, the more right they feel they have to a say in what is in the best interests of your children, and sometimes that results in a child protection case being established which is completely unnecessary.

1. Rights of the child, responsibilities of the parent.
2. How your children are stolen by the state