To the Australian Parliament, Federal Government, State and Territory Governments, Courts and Relevant Family Law Authorities

We call for urgent reform to the enforcement of parenting orders in Australia.

Parenting orders are legally binding orders of the Court. They are made to protect children's relationships, care arrangements and wellbeing when parents cannot reach agreement.

Yet for many families, a parenting order can become little more than words on paper when one parent refuses, prevents or obstructs the ordered arrangements, or when enforcement processes take so long that irreplaceable years of a child's childhood are lost.

My experience

I am a mother of two children who has been involved in the family law system for many years. Final parenting orders were made by consent in 2023. Those orders provide for my involvement in my children's lives, including regular communication and arrangements for spending time with them, as well as access to relevant school and medical information.

Despite those orders, I have experienced prolonged separation from my children. At various times I have gone many months without seeing or speaking with them. In 2026, I have been separated from my son for approximately 16 months and from my daughter for even longer.

These are not arrangements I am asking a Court to create. They are arrangements that have already been ordered.

The 2023 independent Family Report did not recommend permanent separation. It supported progressively rebuilding my relationship with my children, including therapeutic work and gradual progression from supervised to unsupervised time where appropriate.

The recommendation was to rebuild the relationship — not allow it to disappear

My experience has shown how quickly time disappears within the family law system.

Correspondence, negotiations, mediation, assessments and legal proceedings can take months or years. In my own case, there were periods where it took approximately four months to receive a response from the other side's solicitor, followed by a further approximately nine months before mediation occurred.

I have also faced significant difficulties accessing and maintaining Legal Aid assistance while trying to address the ongoing lack of meaningful contact with my children.

Meanwhile, children continue to grow.

A missed birthday cannot be recreated.
A missed school event cannot be recovered.
A missed ordinary afternoon together cannot be replaced.

Delay is not neutral when childhood is involved.

CHILDREN MUST COME FIRST.

This petition does not seek to force children into unsafe circumstances.

Safety, welfare and the best interests of children must always come first. Children's views must also be heard and considered appropriately.

However, genuine safety concerns must be distinguished from deliberate or persistent non-compliance with Court orders.

Where circumstances have genuinely changed, there should be a timely process for determining what should happen. What should not occur is for one parent to effectively decide that a Court order no longer applies while the other parent spends months or years trying to have it implemented.

Where professional reports recommend therapeutic rebuilding of a parent-child relationship, there must also be an effective way to ensure that those recommendations can actually be implemented.

We call for meaningful enforcement

We call upon governments, Parliament, courts and relevant authorities to urgently reform the enforcement of parenting orders by providing:

• A faster and more effective pathway for serious or persistent breaches.
• Timely and meaningful consequences for deliberate non-compliance.
• An urgent mechanism for restoring court-ordered parenting time or communication where appropriate.
• Greater accountability for repeated withholding or obstruction.
• Better protection for children from being placed in the middle of parental conflict.
• Recognition that prolonged disruption of a safe parent-child relationship can itself cause harm.
• Accessible and affordable legal assistance for parents seeking enforcement.
• Greater accountability for delays in correspondence, mediation, listings and enforcement proceedings.
• Recognition of the financial burden placed on a complying parent when court-ordered care is not occurring because the other parent is refusing or failing to comply. A parent who is genuinely attempting to exercise court-ordered time should not be left carrying the financial responsibilities associated with caring for children while being prevented from doing so by the other parent's non-compliance.
• Greater emphasis on implementing existing parenting orders rather than repeatedly requiring families to renegotiate arrangements already determined by a Court.
• Effective mechanisms for progressive relationship restoration where professional assessments have recommended rebuilding a parent-child relationship.

A parenting order must mean something

This is not about one parent winning and another losing.

It is about children.

Children deserve stability, security and the opportunity to maintain safe and meaningful relationships with their parents.

Parents who comply with Court orders should not be disadvantaged while another parent can prevent those orders from being implemented simply because the enforcement process is slow or difficult to access.

A legal right that cannot realistically be exercised is not an effective right.

A Court order that cannot realistically be enforced undermines confidence in the justice system.

My experience is only one example of a much wider issue affecting families across Australia. I experienced alienation as a child, it destroyed my childhood, delayed my development, narrowed my opportunity, silenced my voice and impacted my life and mind in ways that could have been avoided if the system designed to protect me and my alienated parent worked. Now a parent myself I'm experiencing alienation from my children experiencing the same broken system not as a child this time but as a parent, and the family legal system leaves me standing practically helpless in supporting and protecting my child. It's a heavy grief with life lasting impacts that no one should have to experience. 

Children's childhoods cannot wait for justice.

We call on our elected representatives and policymakers to act now.

Respect parenting orders.
Strengthen enforcement.
Protect children and their relationships.
Support compliant parents.
Make the family law system accountable.

A parenting order must be more than words on paper.

It must mean something.