A voucher to encourage people to stay together is weird - presumably only those who want to try to stay together will apply. In which case the pilot scheme will be pronounced a success. But what of the counsellors delivering the service - will they be pushing a stay-togehter-at-all-costs barrow? I think the $200 would be better spent on pre-marital counselling so people don't go into marriages that they later regret and have children caught up in the crossfire.

For the most part I agree, I do wish your examples had been less female centric. They appeared to be reinforcing gendered stereotypes. Women reporting violence is mentioned while ignoring men who also deal with violence and other abusive behaviour from spouses, its also a reality that sometimes child care and financial outcomes are grossly unfair. Not the main point of the article I know but I think we will be a step closer to making divorce a less toxic environment when both the deliberate and incidental gender digs are removed from the discussion.

I'm if the view that Andrews should be focussing his attention on removing governments contribution to the toxidity of post seperation processes rather than token efforts to hold together shaky marriages. The plan as I've seen it looks a lot like a means to funnel extra money into relationship counselling services (with churches have a strong foothold in that industry). From what I've seen there is little if any evidence that a $200 voucher will make any difference to couples on the brink of seperating.

Making it easier for parents to work together at parenting their children post seperation by removing government supplied incentives to fight over residency would be a big start. Its a difficult area with no obvious easy answers but from my perspective the current government involvement makes it overall much harder to work together if one party is a player. There seem to be few checks and balances in the system to deal with issues of fairness or overall outcomes over time.

R0bert

Robert, I have known several male victims of domestic violence and there are no safe houses for them. I believe they get far less support from their friends etc. than female victims because of the view that they should "just man up". I am hoping to write a feature on this if I can get some interviews.

Setting aside the easy cynicism that this is supposed to be an age where the 'entitlement' to such things as $200 government vouchers is at an end...

it would be more useful to combine some of Candide's and R0bert's points into a mandatory pre-marriage system requiring a non-renegotiable agreement stipulating the financial and other relevant details of any separation/divorce to be lodged as a part of the marriage contract.

A bit like some preventative medicine in order to save a lot of the future personal, social and financial costs of too many toxic marriages causing their version of toxic shock syndrome.

In our current apparent 'budget emergency' I see no point in wasting money on either pre or post marriage counselling.

If the government can't find enough money to effectively support our sick, disabled or elderly citizens, then marital problems should come last...

Mry Garden
The service for male victims of domestic violence in Sydney suffered funding cuts in the recent NSW budget - they were told they had to share the same refuge with a women's service. You have to wonder what goes on in the mind of the government.