Parental Alienation: Focus on The 2025 Australian Federal Election

Reform Family Law For 2025!

• The Australian family law system is broken, and parental alienation is rampant as we head into the 2025 Federal Election.
   
• Campaigns on the cost of living, housing, and immigration ignore families caught in the turmoil of separation, coercive control, and parental alienation. 
  
  
• A failed system allows parental alienation to go unchecked. Its reckless and harmful reforms make the most vulnerable navigate a system encouraging this abuse.
  
  
• Parents using alienating behaviours turn their children against the other parent, disrupting the child’s relationship with that parent and their family members. It leads to mental health challenges, suicides, and significant social and economic costs to the public.

Ignoring the Costs at YOUR Expense!

According to USA population projections¹, 1.3% of Australians may be parents who have been moderately or severely alienated from their children. In 2024, that equates to more than 350,000 parents and possibly 700,000 children².

UK research³ and USA projections suggest that a significant proportion, up to half of parents exposed to alienating behaviours (a form of psychological and emotional abuse), will suffer adverse mental health outcomes such as PTSD and non-fatal suicidal behaviour (including suicide attempts) or may die from suicide.

Australia does not directly measure parental alienation’s effects or socioeconomic costs. Still, we think that a significant number of suicide deaths and non-fatal suicidal behaviour result from parental alienation.

A 2017 study⁴ estimated that the economic cost of suicide and non-fatal suicidal behaviour (NFSB) in the Australian workforce, including both men and women, is approximately AUD$6.73 billion. We think that a significant proportion of this cost results from parental alienation. It is possible this burden still does not capture the true impact of parental alienation on the Australian community. The Australian Government is too frightened to measure it!

Australia Fares Poorly in International Comparisons

While countries like Belgium, Denmark, Israel, and the UK lead the way in shared parenting and smarter family law policies, Australia is tearing families apart. Our Government has removed shared parenting and meaningful relationship principles from the Family Law Act, while countries like Denmark retain it. Australia now uses some of the worst practices for children’s welfare. We are clinging to outdated policies that hurt families and fail children.

Why Isn’t This Issue On Campaign Agendas?

Extreme political agendas are warping Australia’s family law system. Current policies operate on the flawed assumption that children don’t need both parents or family relationships and can make adult decisions. 

The extremists claim to address safety. Instead, they reward destructive behaviour. Parents who block contact or alienate their children face no real consequences and may be rewarded for their behaviour.

Australian governments are putting families in danger and tearing families apart. They are making abusive parenting a social and legal norm by “validating bad behaviour in the child’s best interests”.Getting rid of a good enough parent is OK as long as the children are “safe”. Seriously?

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Take the Lead-Demand Change!

• Investigate Properly: Fully examine all allegations before decisions are made. Stop taking protective action that becomes a status quo even after allegations are found unsubstantiated or false.

• Reinstate Shared Parenting: Children need a healthy relationship with both parents⁵. Reform judicial processes to prioritise swiftly resolving parent-child contact issues in line with international best practices.

• Resolve issues outside court: Strengthen time-limited mediation and arbitration for parent-child contact issues.

• Recognise parental alienation: Treat it as abuse, as non-gendered coercive control and child psychological abuse at the same level as any other form of family and domestic violence.

• Stop Rewarding alienation and abusive parenting: Cut child support for parents who block access. Align child support and family law processes

• Enforce Court Orders: Give accountable consequences⁶ for breaches that compensate for time lost and prevent further violations. Remove perverse incentives for harmful and abusive parenting behaviours.

• Call for a Royal Commission: Expose the damage of failed policies and family breakdowns. Investigate links between relationship disruptions, suicide rates, family violence policies, child support and family law.

• Focus on Fairness: Men and women do damage to family members. Address violence and coercive control without political or gender bias.

Alienated Parents and Family Members VOTE!

Take the lead—demand accountability and action for Australian families.It is time to mobilise politically to highlight the terrible consequences of current policies on families and children. This federal election could be pivotal for addressing these challenges and reclaiming your family.

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1. ^{Harman, J. J., Leder-Elder, S., & Biringen, Z. (2019). Prevalence of adults who are the targets of parental alienating behaviours and their impact. Children and Youth Services Review, 106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2019.104471}  “^{Using another means of assessment for the third poll, 39.1% (of 594) of parents in the US are the non-reciprocating targets of parental alienating behaviours, which is over 22 million parents and confirms previous estimates that did not differentiate between reciprocating and non-reciprocating parents (Harman et al., 2016). Of these, 6.7% of the parents had children who were moderately to severely alienated, which is at least 1.3% of the US population. Alienated parents also had high levels of depression, trauma symptoms, and risk for suicide.”} ↩︎
2. ^{Assuming an average of two children per family, with each parent representing a family, and that both children are alienated.} ↩︎
3. ^{Hine, B., Harman, J., Leder-Elder, S., & Bates, E. (2024). Alienating behaviours in separated mothers and fathers in the UK. UK: University of West London Retrieved from https://www.uwl.ac.uk/sites/uwl/files/2024-04/Alienating%20behaviours_v3.pdf} ↩︎
4. ^{Kinchin, I., & Doran, C. M. (2017). The economic cost of suicide and non-fatal suicide behaviour in the Australian workforce and the potential impact of a workplace suicide prevention strategy. International journal of environmental research and public health, 14(4), 347. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5409548/pdf/ijerph-14-00347.pdf}  ↩︎
5. ^{Together with reversal of parental care and authority to give it effect. Paramount considerations should be a relationship with both parents, family members and it is safe to do so. For example, substantiated claims of family violence or coercive control (for example, using parental alienating behaviours) could extinguish the presumption of shared parenting. Similarly, unsubstantiated, false and malicious allegations of family violence, sexual abuse, alienation or other forms of coercive control could also extinguish the presumption of shared parenting.} ↩︎
6. ^{Including reversal of parental care and responsibility, restrictions on further legal action, compensating time, incarceration for severe breaches that harm children.} ↩︎

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