With Queensland voters still undecided between the major parties, One Nation could hold the balance of power in a hung parliament.

One of the party's key policies is changes to the family law system - including the question of who gets access to the kids after separation. The One Nation policy appeals to men who feel 'bias' in the family law system has made them and others the silent victims of "family breakdown".

In April of this year, members of the Facebook group Blokes Advice (BA) met with representatives of One Nation for what one of the group's admins calls "a mashing of minds".

BA is a men's only closed 'secret' Facebook group of more than half a million members, with at least half of those members in Queensland. Facebook shut the group down in August of last year after it was accused of glorifying rape and violence against women. It was immediately reformed and administrators say the kinds of posts that got it shut down are not allowed any more.

It's also dipped its toe into advocacy issues. One of its big ones is family law reform, or what an administrator of the group, Ash Smith, calls: "family law reform, gender equality, father's rights and men's health/depression and suicide prevention".

Ash says One Nation reached out to BA admins to sound out what the huge membership wanted.

"Our meeting lasted three, three-and-a-half hours," he told Hack.

"We were discussing what we wanted out of the country.

"They came to see what we are, because we represent Australians in general."

Brotherhood of Fathers, BA and One Nation

BA doesn't officially support any political party, and, if it did, it's not clear which way members would vote. Ash says One Nation didn't ask BA to post any material or support its campaign. He brought along to the meeting a portfolio of printed Facebook posts from members who had written about losing access to their children. These kinds of deeply personal accounts are fairly regular on BA.

About six months after that meeting, and shortly before the Queensland Premier called a snap election, One Nation launched a policy on family law reform, built around what it identified as a national crisis of fathers killing themselves due to access issues.

On the day of the launch, the party's Queensland leader Steve Dickson said he had been told the "anecdotal" figure was as high as 21 fathers a week. This was echoing Pauline Hanson's maiden speech to the Senate, made almost a year earlier. The Senator declared: "on average three men a day ... take their lives due to family breakdowns."

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Whatsapp Pauline Hanson and Queensland party leader Steve Dickson.

We'll take a look at the basis of this figure below. But regardless of accuracy, the "anecdotal number" has been circulating on online groups like Blokes Advice, where it's often quoted as a confirmed statistic alongside members' stories of losing access.

The force behind #21Fathers is the Australian Brotherhood of Fathers (ABF), started by men's rights activist Leith Erikson. The ABF and One Nation have hosted sausage sizzles together. Leith did not respond to Hack's request for an interview.

Leith is a member of BA, is often tagged in posts about family access issues, and Ash the admin says he's offered Leith the chance to use BA "as an advertising avenue".

"If you want to get the word out to half a million blokes, I said to him by all means."

Fifty per cent of our members need something like ABF."

For example, on September 30 a member posted: "The black dog has hit me hard today, today is my son's first birthday, but the ex is stopping me being able to see him at all, why do women think they have the right to stop fathers seeing their kids."

There were hundreds of likes and comments. Leith Erikson and the ABF were namechecked as a source of hope: "He is doing incredible work and has played a huge role in exposing the truth of an immoral system to Pauline Hanson."

A post on November 21 about "why 21 father's die a week on average" had over 4,000 likes and hundreds of comments of sympathy and understanding.

For BA, this simmering discontent with the family law system found its expression in early October, when a member posted about a young man sitting on the corner of a street on the Sunshine Coast. The man had a sign with the words "I want to see my son" and declared he would camp on the spot until he had access to his son again. BA rallied to the cause. Ash Smith says he immediately "went down to the Woolworths at Springfield and bought $220 worth of sausages".

Dozens of members came down for a barbecue and the combined Facebook posts had tens of thousands of likes and comments.

It was never made clear why the man did not have access to his son.

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'Hard to say which way BA voters would go'

Even if a lot of BA members support One Nation's version of family law reform it doesn't meant they'll vote for the party on Saturday. In the past, members have expressed disagreement with the party's anti-unionism or anti-immigration stance. Most on BA seem to support same-sex marriage, while One Nation does not. Many on BA explicitly do not support One Nation.

At the same time, 'family law reform' is the only political issue on the page that seems to have overwhelming, consensus support. It has 'cut-through'. It's become more prominent as the page has tried to transform its reputation through advocacy causes.

Does this indicate a groundswell of support, which One Nation may be trying to tap for an election that could be decided in a few seats by a few thousand votes?

"Without throwing a poll up in the group for half a million to vote on it's hard to say which way the majority of voters from BA would go," Ash told Hack.

"But I do think that out of all the political parties One Nation is the strongest on domestic violence and family law."

What is One Nation proposing?

One Nation outlines its "Keep Families Connected" domestic violence policy here. The party says the role of fathers is overlooked or deliberately undervalued in the family law system.

Here's what it wants:

Court orders - like an against a person who makes you fear for your safety, an Apprehended Violence Order - to not necessarily restrict a patient's access to their children.

Allegations of abuse to be proven with medical records or police convictions - effectively narrowing the existing definition of abuse. In 2012, the courts expanded the definition of family violence to include emotional abuse and things like controlling, manipulative behaviour.

'Consent without admission' scrapped. That's when one parent makes an application for a Domestic Violence Order, and the accused parents agrees to the conditions of the order without agreeing to what was alleged. One Nation says both parties should be present in court so allegations can be challenged before orders are imposed.

In summary, One Nation says a man (or woman) who has hit their partner should not have access to their children. The important detail here is that One Nation says the partner should continue to have access to children up until that physical violence is proven in court.

In selling its family law reform policy, One Nation uses the phrase "gender-neutral". The party's Queensland leader Steve Dickson says the focus on female victims of domestic violence is a sign that the government is not protecting male victims.

"Anyone who doesn't want to make it gender-neutral, they're basically saying one is better than the other," he told Hack.

"I don't think that's acceptable in today's society."

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Whatsapp Steve Dickson and Leith Erikson in mid-November.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), around one in six women have experienced physical violence by a partner, compared with one in seventeen men. The ABS also says the vast majority of male and female victims of physical assault reported that the offender was male.

Despite the "gender neutral" phrasing, opponents immediately attacked One Nation's policy as based on the advice of "a few angry men". The Liberal Nationals Party family violence spokeswoman said Steve Dickson had been "brainwashed by a few jilted men caught up in custody battles".

Where does the 21 deaths a week figure come from?

Steve Dickson said the figure of 21 deaths a week was based on a conversation he'd had with an ambulance paramedic in his electorate who had read suicide notes.

"He came to me and he said, Steve, I'm going to jobs all the time and we're finding people who've [died by] suicide and they've got notes beside them explaining they've gone through the family court system," he said.

He said the figure was "anecdotal" and but "I'm waiting for somebody to come and tell me it's wrong." The ABS does not collect statistics on the number of fathers who have died by suicide because of loss of access to their children.

The Australian Brotherhood of Fathers, which has run an entire campaign around the figure, also said the number was based on "anecdotal evidence".

"We didn't produce a statistic we merely researched how they came to suggest 3 a day was a national average and reported this as part of an awareness campaign #21fathers," they write.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics says that more than 42 men die by suicide a week.

But there's no data collected on how many of them are dads, or whether or not they have had relationship breakdowns. There's also no firm data on contributing factors to suicide, like mental illness and substance abuse.

There is research from the Australian Institute for Suicide Research and Prevention at Griffith University to suggest that shame immediately after separation heightens a man's risk of suicide. However, that research does not refer specifically to fathers, and found that as time goes on, the risk reduces.

It's very likely there are men who have taken their own lives due to losing access to their children, and every one of these deaths is a tragic loss.

There are however, no statistics showing that every week 21 men are killing themselves due to family breakdown.

Are false claims of abuse common?

Pauline Hanson has said allegations of abuse made by women aren't tested rigorously enough in the courts and these "frivolous complaints" were also tying up the court system.

"You know, someone going out there and claiming domestic violence because they're told 'I don't like the colour of the dress you're wearing'," she said last year.

This narrative of "frivolous complaints" ignores the fact most divorces are resolved amicably or through mediation that occurs outside of the court system. If they proceed to court, they first go through the Federal Circuit Court. The Family Court only sees the worst of the worst - cases involving domestic violence, crime and serious mental illness. The majority of divorces never end up in the Family Court.

Despite this, men's stories of going through the family court system, recounted in sympathetic forums like BA, create a perception of widespread "family breakdown".

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Director of the the Men's Legal Service in Brisbane, James Stokes, says "without a doubt" false allegations of abuse are made against men.

But he says sometimes men may not believe they're perpetrating family violence, because there is no physical harm - they may not recognise emotional abuse as violence.

The courts are also overworked, with judges sometimes having as little as 15 minutes to issue court orders that can have long-lasting ramifications. According to the Law Council of Australia, some judges in the Federal Circuit Court have a docket list of 500 cases and deal with 20 or 30 cases on an average day - that's a backlog of weeks for a short moment in court.

James Stokes says he tells clients it can take 12 to 18 months to get an outcome, if they end up going all the way through the process.

University of Sydney law professor Patrick Parkinson says the Family Court does sometimes get it wrong in determining what is an ongoing, credible threat.

"Any history of violence, however long in the past, however minor in the scale of things it may be, triggers the same response," Patrick said.

"They're not deemed suitable for mediation, they need to be fast tracked through the system."

"We need to focus on the cases where there's a current risk of harm."

But he says talk of an "epidemic of false claims of violence or abuse" is overblown.

Law Council of Australia President Fiona McLeod said there may be a perception of women making false claims simply because women are speaking out about abuse.

"We have seen an explosion in Victoria ... of the number of complaints of domestic violence," she said.

"[There's] growing community awareness that women don't have have to put up with this anymore."

Is the family court system actually biased?

Since 2006, the courts have been instructed to take into account the potential for kids to have meaningful relationships with both parents, unless that compromises their safety.

Zoe Rathus, a law lecturer at Brisbane's Griffith University, has gone through the data of court outcomes issued by the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS).

The data shows limiting access to children is very unusual.

"Sole parental responsibility and orders for no time with an abusive parent only occurred in very extreme cases where there was significant physical violence," Zoe said.

"It was a very, very rare outcome."

Where there's no allegations of abuse or violence, the court only awards sole rights to one parent in one out of ten cases, Zoe said.

But even in cases where there are allegations of sexual abuse or domestic violence, shared parental responsibility is the norm. In fact, in seven out of ten cases where these kinds of allegations are made, both parents still got shared access, according to the AIFS stats.

University of Sydney's Patrick Parkinson said only about seven in every 100 cases that begin in the courts will end up being decided by a judge.

"Most cases will settle along the way somewhere," he said.

He said the decisions made in the Family Court reflect the expectations of society that mothers will raise children, at least in their early years.

"It's not at all uncommon or unexpected that after separation the primary care of those children continues with mum," Patrick said.

In September, the Federal Government announced the Australian Law Reform Commission would run a wide-ranging inquiry into the family law system. All of the experts interviewed for this story called for more resources for the Federal Circuit Court and Family Court.