The Federal Labor government is keen to introduce compulsory mediation for property settlements in family law matters as a requirement to be allowed to access its Family court system.

Mediations were made more or less compulsory for disputes about children by the previous Liberal government. At the moment mediations are done by all sorts of people, they don't have to be lawyers. Some of them are social workers. Although some might claim that mediations (conferences where people try and agree to settle their disputes) have been successful for children disputes, those people are probably not the ones who end up arguing about poorly drafted agreements in court later on.

Some might question the wisdom of having people sort out their financial disputes under the supervision of people with no legal training. Unlike disputes about children, which seem to always evolve over time, the desired end result for property disputes is for them to be finally resolved on a permanent basis. So, if the wrong agreement is reached there may be a lot more trouble involved in changing its effects than in changing the effects of an agreement about who gets the children on weekends.

The proposal of course, adds another layer of complexity and delay to having a family law dispute determined in court. Those wanting legal representation will have to pay more. But that is regarded as being of minor importance, since the main goal is to try and reduce the cost to the government of providing timely, efficient and effective judicial solutions to people's problems.