The Australian government has announced plans to review the country’s family law system.

On Thursday, Attorney-General George Brandis said the Australian Law Reform Commission will undertake the most thorough examination of family law since the 1970s. The review was “necessary and long-overdue” he claimed, as “families and their needs have significantly evolved” in that time.

One focus of this review will be the adversarial nature of many family law disputes such as divorce or child contact. Speaking to ABC news, Brandis said there was “certainly a body of opinion among family law practitioners that the adversarial mode in which family law proceedings are conducted is not the perfect model”.

It is “always better that disputes be resolved by mediation rather than by litigation” especially when dealing with such personal matters, he added.

The review was welcomed by the Australian Law Council. President Fiona McLeod said that while her organisation was looking forward to contributing to it, she warned that “any significant recommendations for reform will not be able to be implemented without corresponding funding”.

Meanwhile, Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said that the changes and reforms required were “urgent” and could not “afford to wait until the report’s due date”. He also singled out Brandis for criticism, saying that the Attorney General’s “failure to appoint a federal circuit court judge in [the New South Wales city of] Newcastle for 12 months [had] created huge backlogs in that jurisdiction that have harmed families”.

The results of the review are expected by the end of March 2019 at the latest.

This article was written and originally published by the Marilyn Stowe Family Law Team.