Transcript: What men want
May 23, 2004
Reporter: Peter Overton

The Gemmell family have a 50/50 access arrangement.

INTRO — PETER OVERTON: A divorce is devastating enough, but a custody battle, well, that's something else again. And as nearly half of all marriages fail, you can imagine how many children end up in broken homes. These days, though, custody is just the beginning. After that comes access, the new family battleground. Currently, there's a general legal formula. Usually the courts rule that the mother should have the children for 80 percent of the time, the father, 20 percent. But for many dads, that's simply not fair. They want equal time, 50/50 access.

STORY — PETER OVERTON: It's often bitter, always painful and when there are children involved, it can be devastating. But for Australia's legal system, who gets the kids is simply a matter of maths.

TREVOR ARTHURSON, FATHERS 4 JUSTICE: For 30 years, the Family Court has been dishing out 80/20 … 30 years! There's a whole generation of children that have grown up without their fathers. There's a whole generation of men out there that have witnessed this injustice and they've had enough. Here we go. Oh, yeah, that's a big one.

PETER OVERTON: Trevor Arthurson and his wife split up five years ago. Before the break-up, he saw his daughter every day, now it's every second weekend and half the school holidays.

TREVOR ARTHURSON: Who says it's best for children to live with mum? If there's nothing wrong with the relationship between a father and the child or the mother and the child, then why not 50/50?

DADS IN DISTRESS MEETING: Guys, we normally have a moment's silence that we ask that you think about the five males a day that suicide in this country.

PETER OVERTON: Trevor Arthurson is not alone in his call for fathers to have the option of 50/50 access to their children after a divorce.

FATHER: What gives anyone the right to deny children access to their dad or their dad access to their children?

PETER OVERTON: Nearly every day of every week, heartbroken dads around Australia are coming together.

DADS IN DISTRESS MEETING: It's hard to sit here and talk tonight and keep it together, but I'm getting there and I want you to know I'm going to be okay and it's going to be … thanks to your help, I'm going to be okay.

PETER OVERTON: They're coping with the break-up of their marriages and the loss of their children. They have limited access and even less hope.

FATHER: It still hurts, because I still love them and I'll never stop loving them.

TREVOR ARTHURSON: The hurt is incredible. I've been there. I've experienced the pain. I've been in that hole and it's a dark, dark place. It was shocking. Some dads don't make it out the other end.

PETER OVERTON: What do you hope for your child and other children out there?

TREVOR ARTHURSON: More time to be a real dad, not just a weekend babysitter. It feels like I've been demoted from dad to just a babysitter every second weekend.

PETER OVERTON: Does a father have the right to see his children when he wants?

KATHLEEN SWINBOURNE: No.

PETER OVERTON: Why?

KATHLEEN SWINBOURNE, SOLE PARENTS UNION: It is not about fathers' rights. It is about parental responsibility and children's rights.

PETER OVERTON: Kathleen Swinbourne is a divorced mother of three who reckons men should stop complaining and start accepting that the current system works. Kathleen, who is president of the Sole Parents Union, has had sole custody of her children for the past decade.

KATHLEEN SWINBOURNE: You don't have 50/50 even when parents live together, so why should you expect it when you're separated?

PETER OVERTON: What do you think motivates some fathers about going for 50/50?

KATHLEEN SWINBOURNE: In a lot of cases, it is love for their children. Yes, they love their children. Yes, they want to be with their children. But in many cases, they haven't really thought through the consequences. Caring isn't just about being there at bedtime to read them a story. It's about a lot more than that. It's about giving up a lot of your life for a long time while the kids are young. Yes, they get older and things change, but you have to put those arrangements in place.

ROD HARDWICK, DADS AUSTRALIA: Look, I think that argument is an argument of a bygone era. More men today now want to spend time with their children. Men can share the responsibility of nurturing and protecting their child and men want that responsibility, but they are being denied it by legislation, which can simply be overturned by Parliament.

PETER OVERTON: Rod Hardwick is a passionate advocate of shared parenting.

ROD HARDWICK: Equal parenting is the win/win situation in any family separation.

PETER OVERTON: He has a weekly community radio show in western Sydney called Dads on the Air. And he has founded a national support group called DADS Australia.

ROD HARDWICK: It is the child's fundamental right to be cared for by both a mother and a father. The current system we've got, okay, discriminates against fathers from loving, nurturing and protecting their children.

KATHLEEN SWINBOURNE: Rubbish. In a word, they're not discriminated against. If you go to court, if you look at the court stats, fathers win custody cases in 40 percent of the time. Now, that's not necessarily full custody, but that might not be what they're going for.

PETER OVERTON: Rod Hardwick's views stem from personal experience. Five years ago, his then girlfriend fell pregnant.

ROD HARDWICK: In my case, it was a situation where I've never seen my daughter. She's four-and-a-half. I sat down with my parents and we looked at… It was going to cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars to get court orders that would never be, they could never be ratified by court … not ratified, that would never be enforced by a court if they were broken. We sat down and said we'll fight another way and we'll fight for change so that one day my daughter will recognise what I did. Yeah, we will … that one day we'll spend time together.

PETER OVERTON: As in all break-ups, there are two sides to this story. In a letter to us, the mother of Rod's child said there was nothing stopping him seeing his daughter, but then, custody battles are nearly always messy and often nasty. In London this week, Tony Blair was pelted with a condom filled with purple powder, thrown by a member of the radical men's group, Fathers 4 Justice. They've taken their battle, not just to Parliament, but to the streets. And they draw their inspiration from Sir Bob Geldof.

SIR BOB GELDOF: The love of a man for his child, which is the real love that dare not speak its name. The real love of a man for his child, the love of a father for his child is equal to the love of a mother for their child. It is precise equal. It could be expressed in different ways, but it is equal.

PETER OVERTON: In 1995, Bob Geldof began a long, costly legal battle for shared parenting of his daughters, who were then in the care of his ex-wife Paula Yates.

SIR BOB GELDOF: I was handed a piece of paper saying, "You may see your children on this day and every second weekend." Why? What had I done? I saw them every day. I took them to school. I bathed them. I fed them. I cooked for them. I read their stories. I cuddled them before going to bed. I listened to them in sleep. Why now was the state and all its instruments of justice, but in this case I thought discrimination, why were they all aimed at me?

PETER OVERTON: Fathers 4 Justice is now taking hold in Australia. In Brisbane, Trevor Arthurson and other fathers recently picketed the Family Law Court.

FATHER: People need to look into this properly. It's not getting looked into properly.

FATHER: We're here, there's a lot of help out there. Don't, don't…

FATHER: I'm just sick of it. I've been fighting for too long now.

FATHER: Yeah. Hey, guys, fight for this for so many years now, so many years.

FATHER: I've been fighting for five. I can't do no more.

FATHER: Don't be one of those statistics, mate.

PETER OVERTON: You want 50/50. You want that legislated?

TREVOR ARTHURSON: I would like to see 50/50 legislated so we can enter, separating couples can enter the negotiation of custody on an equal footing. At the moment, I don't feel that there is an equal footing, because the assumption is that 80/20 is the best any man can hope for.

PETER OVERTON: So can 50/50 parenting work? When Maria and Ewan Gemmell divorced three years ago, they decided it was the best solution. There were no lawyers, no Family Law Courts, just a shared custody plan for their children Brigitte and Callum.

MARIA GEMMELL: Ewan would probably say the same, we would like to shake hands and say have a great life, best of luck. But we can't do that, that has never been an issue because we have the children, so it's in our best interest to make it work and get a reasonable sort of relationship.

PETER OVERTON: After their marriage ended, Ewan and Maria agreed to stay living in the same area. Every second week, their children move from Mum's house to Dad's.

EWAN GEMMELL: Kids would like a relationship with both parents. That's what we've tried to offer them.

PETER OVERTON: Whether 50/50 is for everyone is a different matter. Kathleen Swinbourne's children love their dad, but not the idea of living with him half the time.

Have you heard of the concept 50/50?

NASTASSIA BROWN-SWINBOURNE AND SIBLINGS: (All) Yeah.

PETER OVERTON: Would you want it that way?

NASTASSIA BROWN-SWINBOURNE AND SIBLINGS: (All) No.

NASTASSIA BROWN-SWINBOURNE: It would be way too hard. We'd be split between two houses, we'd be split between two friends and two social activities. Most of my friends from school live here instead of where my Dad lives.

PETER OVERTON: Too hard?

NASTASSIA BROWN-SWINBOURNE: Way too hard.

PETER OVERTON: And that seems to be the attitude of the Federal Government as well. A recent parliamentary inquiry suggested extra mediation for parents battling over their kids, but stopped short of recommending shared custody.

KATHLEEN SWINBOURNE: Shared custody is not the same as shared parenting. You can be an involved parent. You can have access to your children. You can have equal love, and equal responsibility and input without actually living with them equal time. Shared custody is about parents. It's not about kids.

ROD HARDWICK: Let's put the children's interests first. All the research shows that children who are raised in a 50/50 environment are doing better than children from a single parent environment. Let's not get caught up in the bitterness and resentment of a family dispute and let's start thinking about children.

PETER OVERTON: Perfect world you're painting here?

ROD HARDWICK: But we could make it happen.

PETER OVERTON: What would be the perfect scenario for you?

TREVOR ARTHURSON: If she were here half the time.

PETER OVERTON: Trevor Arthurson intends to continue the fight. He won't give up hope. At his home, his daughter's bedroom is made up and ready.

TREVOR ARTHURSON: Every Sunday afternoon, there is just that little twinge that harks back to the time of separation. I've driven past her place of a night and just, just waved.

PETER OVERTON: You do that often?

TREVOR ARTHURSON: No, I don't do it often.

PETER OVERTON: Why?

TREVOR ARTHURSON: Because it hurts too much.