Shadow Health Minister Kim Wilson has branded the Children’s Amendment Act 2014 to help resolve disputes in child access through mediation cases as “half-baked… merely adding another level of bureaucracy” to the process.

The former Attorney General, who has sat through countless family cases as a member of the bar and as acting magistrate for the family courts, said that while she commended Community Minister Wayne Scott for his efforts, “he didn’t go far enough”.

The amendment requires the courts to offer mediation to the parents of a child whose custody or access is in the hands of the courts.

The amendment, outlined in The Throne Speech, aims to encourage amicable agreements between parents with regards to the upbringing of the child before the court issues co-parenting orders. This process is set to be “fortified” by the establishment of a Co-Parenting Mediation Council to provide regulatory oversight and support for dispute resolution.

Ms Wilson said the amendment was an avenue for the introduction of a framework to provide mediation which already exists.

She was referring to the section of the current act that states: “Where the court is satisfied that a parent has failed to comply with an order granting access to the other parent the court may; require the parents to submit to mediation of the matters in dispute by a children’s officer or other person appointed by the court; or require that rights of access conferred by the order be monitored or supervised by a children’s officer.”

She said that a mediator is hardly ever needed in cases where both parents agree on a co-parenting order.

“Consenting parents now have to be assessed,” she said. “If the parents agree, we as a court will add another bureaucratic level and we are going to force you into mediation. I know the cases I have represented — they will walk out of the court. If they are already in agreement in how the child should be shared, nine times out of ten, they aren’t going to court anyway.”

In response, Mr Scott said: “I smiled when I was hearing a learned member and former Attorney General suggest that mediation already exists. Mediation does exist today after you have gone through a court process, you have been given an order and then it’s been breached. We see it as the wrong way round.”

He said the aim of the amendment was to address issues agreed upon before it goes through the litigation process. The Minister said that the amendment didn’t claim to resolve every conceivable problem but made the process less arduous describing it as an “extraordinarily good first step.”

Ms Wilson later asked Mr Scott who would pay for mediation, to which he responded that if the parties could not pay for it themselves, it could be funded by legal aid. He also noted that mediation would be more cost effective option for both the parties and the legal aid system.