Over recent years, almost 100,000 Australians have been filing for divorce annually.
This alarming statistic comes from the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia, which also recorded a major spike in divorce at the peak of Covid panic, when governments locked families — along with their complex domestic problems — together in their homes for months on end.
Financial struggles, working from home and remote schooling were among the many additional stresses imposed on Australian families by frantic political leaders.
While the peak in divorces seen during the Covid years has since subsided, the long-term trajectory remains deeply concerning.
The number of divorces taking place in Australia has been climbing steadily for the better part of a century, spiking to its highest peak in 1976 — the year that no-fault divorce was introduced.
It is for all these reasons that Australian Christians remains committed to policies that strengthen families, promote marriage and counter the scourge of family breakdown across our country.
As noted in a recent Sydney Morning Herald article, divorce data, as terrible as it is, still doesn’t quantify the devastating scale of the issue in our nation. That’s because a growing number of families are headed by de facto couples — and when they separate, no divorce is officially registered, even though the impact of family breakdown can be felt just as strongly by all involved.
In other words, far more family breakdowns are taking place each year than all the fancy ABS charts are able to tell us.
“The Separation Guide chief executive Angela Harbinson estimated the true divorce numbers were double, when you included separations of de facto relationships,” according to the SMH.
Harbinson listed “higher rates of crime, suicide and depression, long-term poverty and workplace productivity losses” among the many negative effects of separation and divorce.
Stunningly, she estimated the financial cost of family breakdown at $860,000 per divorce, or more than $40 billion a year, using methodology from a British study.
Today, divorcees account for 8.8 per cent of the Australian population.
Despite all the fanfare it received at the time, legalising same-sex marriage did not boost marriage numbers, nor did it stave off family breakdown. If anything, the trends have only worsened in the years since.
The undeniable conclusion to all of these data points is that marriages and families work best when people are empowered to live the way that God and nature intended. As AC declares in its Marriage and Parenting Policy:
Families are the strength of our nation and parents, whether mums or dads, deserve to be recognised when they choose to stay at home to care for their young children. Families should be protected and strengthened, since they are the primary grouping in which the future generations are nurtured.
Recognising that divorce is sometimes unavoidable, AC also
seeks to promote strategies that will improve mediation outcomes between separated or divorced parents. We support a system of mandatory mediation as the method of achieving agreement among parents and children on how the family relationships will be restructured following divorce.
There is a popular saying that politics is downstream from culture. The reality on the ground, however, is that cultural behaviours are often heavily influenced by a nation’s laws. Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in the dramatic spike in divorces that took place in 1976, and the spikes also seen in the Covid era.
If we want strong marriages and families, we need robust laws that protect these precious institutions. To that end, there is no party fighting harder than Australian Christians. Please join with us today to protect Australian families.
