Australia's Fragmented Family Law System: Jurisdictional Overlap in the Area of Child Protection

Abstract

This article presents the findings of an empirical study of cases of jurisdictional overlap in the area of child protection.1 The study comprised a qualitative analysis of two samples of cases: one drawn predominantly from the Melbourne Children's Court in Victoria (n = 113); the other, from the Canberra Children's Court in the Australian Capital Territory (‘ACT’) (n = 10). Cases from each sample were then tracked in the federal Family Court of Australia. The dominant finding from the study was that in over two thirds of the cases the relevant child protection authority withdrew from the Children's Court proceedings and moved the matter from the Children's Court to the Family Court. This was..