Alby Schultz (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have listened very carefully to some of the debate about the Child Support Agency and, as an individual who has for the last three years undertaken considerable research into the issue of the Child Support Agency, I am absolutely disgusted that people come into this chamber with a sudden interest in it. I have raised specific issues over the years on this issue, and they have not expressed their concerns at all in the past.

Let me get back to the Child Support Legislation Amendment (Reform of the Child Support Scheme—New Formula and Other Measures) Bill 2006. I rise because the bill is introducing some changes to the child support legislation as a result of recommendations which flowed on from a number of reports on the Child Support Agency and, more importantly, from the ministerial task force on child support chaired by Professor Patrick Parkinson. I happen to have a personal view based on the 6,000 submissions I have in my case files from all over Australia that (a) we have not gone far enough in reforming the legislation and the way in which it operates, and (b) we have not done anywhere near enough to make child support legislation fair and equitable across the board for parents, particularly those who have had a marriage break-up.

The role of the Social Security Appeals Tribunal through this legislation is being expanded to include independent reviews of child support decisions, providing a review mechanism that is inexpensive, fair, informal and quick. This is a very positive move by the government in introducing this legislation, because there have been extreme anomalies in the system to the point where, in 99.9 per cent of cases, the payer—that is, the non-residential parent—has been subjected to costs because of the unfair system.

The relationship between the courts and the new Child Support Scheme are going to be simplified. Parents will have better access to court enforcement of child support debts, and courts will have increased power to seek information and evidence in those cases and to make interim arrangements for their child support cases generally. I think most decent and sensible thinking people will applaud that particular change because it has been long overdue.

In terms of the courts, this measure only goes part of the way. On the basis of the evidence I have at my disposal, the courts have taken absolutely no action at all against individuals who have gone into the Family Court on these issues, had orders placed against them and have not complied with those orders relating to the access of children. The courts have done absolutely nothing through the family law court to pursue those individuals breaking judicial instructions. This indicates to me that there is one set of rules for the male component of a marriage and another for the female component. In all cases, the people who have broken the court orders have been female custodial parents, and no action has been taken against them. I make that comment without any apology whatsoever because it is based on, as I said, the considerable evidence in the files I have at my disposal.

Whilst many of these changes are going to make the system somewhat fairer than it is today, unfortunately they will not come into effect in many instances until 2008, although the second stage of the reforms which I just alluded to start on 1 January 2007. In July 2008, stage 3 of the reforms comes into effect. They are centred on a new child support formula being provided based on recent Australian research on the cost of caring for children that take into account the incomes of both parents after equal self-support amounts are deducted, recognise care of the child for more than 14 per cent of the time and treat first and second families more equally. That is a very good initiative. One of the weaknesses of the draconian monolith which is the Child Support Agency, which I have called a national disgrace, is that it has created massive problems for second families in particular. I am very pleased to see that the government has introduced that change to the Child Support Agency legislation through this bill.

There are a number of anomalies that do not seem to resonate with members of this parliament or with the ministers who are responsible for this legislation. I am talking about the problems associated with an agreement between the parents of a child that is made outside of the Child Support Agency. An example of what I am talking about is the situation—and I have documented cases on this as well—where the Child Support Agency has threatened to remove single parent benefits from the person who has custody of the child if that custodial parent did not pursue child support payments, despite the fact that the custodial parent did not want to put any imposition on the father and in fact wanted to get on with her and the child’s life at arms length from the father. I think that is reprehensible. This issue concerns a set of double standards, and an example of this is a case centred on paternity issues. DNA samples may have been taken because of either a comment or a suspicion that a child or a number of children—and some cases have involved three out of four children—were not the children of the person who was the subject of child support payment orders.

In regard to those paternity issues, I refer to the lack of will of the Child Support Agency to chase the real father, recompense the person who was accused of being the father and was not the father or return the money through the system to the parent that that person paid. In some instances, people have paid money for up to eight years—and at the moment there is a classic case of that in a court case in Victoria.

I also note that, under stage 3 of the reforms, the family tax benefit part A maintenance income is going to be changed so that payments are reduced only for those children in the family for whom child support is paid. I think that is a reasonable move. There are also more flexible arrangements with better legal protection that are going to be made for parents who want to make agreements between themselves about the payment of child support and for how lump sum payments are treated—and, in relation to the example I just gave, I think that is a very good move in the right direction. But I will be monitoring that to see how effective it is, because we do one thing and practise another as far as the Child Support Agency itself is concerned.

The income definitions for certain tax free amounts, foreign income and fringe benefits that are used to calculate child support on the one hand and family tax benefit and childcare benefit on the other will be aligned in another change. I think that is a reasonable move by the government and the appropriate minister in the right direction. Resident parents will keep all of their family tax benefit where a non-resident parent is carer of their child for less than 35 per cent of the nights in a year. Non-resident parents who have care of their child for at least 14 per cent of the time will continue to be eligible for the rent assistance component of family tax benefits part A and will continue to be eligible for a healthcare card. I think that is another good move in the right direction. It is probably going to assist in ensuring a better balance between the responsibilities of both parents for the care and upkeep of their child.

The minimum child support payment of about $6.15 per week for non-resident parents who pay child support to two or more families will now have to be paid to each of those families rather than being divided between them. I think that is a very reasonable and sensible approach because it pulls into line those payers, in particular male payers, who make up about 92 per cent of the payers involved in the Child Support Agency, and requires them to meet some responsibility to children that they may have had in two or more families.

Parents who deliberately minimise their income to avoid paying child support will generally have a $20 per child per week minimum payment. Some people would say that that is not enough, but it is certainly more than it is now. I commend the Minister for Families, Community Services and IndigenousAffairs and the government for introducing that. The thing that I and most decent thinking Australians want to see is those people who deliberately ignore and try to avoid their responsibilities to their children being made to pay for their children.

Parents who are using income from second jobs and overtime to re-establish themselves during the first three years after separation may have that income excluded from child support calculations. My advice to the government on that is that the word ‘may’ should be removed and replaced with the word ‘should’, as an amendment to that particular proposal in this bill. The reality is that I have seen more and more people who are paying their child support going into abject poverty because, every time they try to get on with a second family or make a new life for themselves, their additional income is taken into account in the calculation of their child support payments—not even on the net value of the additional income but on its gross value. That in itself is a classic illustration of how this child support legislation, which was originally introduced in the 1980s, has allowed this monolithic bureaucratic empire to get out of control. It has been aided and abetted in that by the lack of interest of previous ministers of the Crown of both political persuasions.

I would like to speak a little bit more about certain parts of this bill. One of the things that I need to speak to, which is part of the proposals in this bill under stage 3 of the reforms, is the section where it says that a parent who has financial responsibility for a stepchild in a second family will now be able to apply to have the stepchild treated as a dependant under the formula used to calculate child support for the parent’s first family. There is a good reason for that change: to date, a stepchild or the children of a second marriage have been treated vastly differently, in terms of their rights as children, from the children of the first marriage. I hope that we do monitor that, and very closely, because it is something that has created an enormous number of problems within the community.

The next thing I want to talk about is, I know, an issue that many in the community have raised. I know the minister has had it raised with him. I have certainly raised it with him, I have certainly raised it with the government and I intend to talk about it here today because it gives me an opportunity to highlight how some legislation can create enormous problems for some sections of the community—and, in this case, no other section of the community is subjected to this particular draconian inconvenience. I am talking about what is commonly referred to as the capacity to earn process of the Child Support Agency which not even the Taxation Office is able to impose on Australians who are out there earning wages. Not even the Taxation Office can do it.

I can give you an example of the impact of the capacity to earn process, for those who do not know what it is. A member of the public who is employed in a job that pays $70,000 a year, has a marriage break-up and is then subjected, quite rightly, to child support payments for the children of that marriage based on his wage. He then finds that, due to various circumstances and perhaps some pressure from the former partner or wife, he cannot cope mentally with the pressure. For example, the former partner of the individual became so vindictive, putting complaints to the person’s employer, that he had all of his career path opportunities removed from him; he was getting nowhere. He could not cope with the pressure. He resigned from his job and took up another job, which paid in the vicinity of $57,000 a year, from memory, which was significantly less than the wage that he got in his previous occupation. And what happened? I will tell you what happened. The Child Support Agency assessed his child support payments on the basis of his previous wage, as his capacity to earn. His child support payments are still being assessed according to that previous wage level, despite the fact that he earns only $57,000 a year. He has gone into a new relationship. He cannot keep up with the payments. He falls behind in the payments and the interest rate increases because there is a penalty imposed on him through the system. He then gets to a stage where, as in many such instances, the debt is between $30,000 and $70,000. He will never be able to pay it back. In some instances—and there are cases of this in my own constituency—that person may take his own life to get away from the system.

The point I am making here is that capacity to earn is a supersensitive issue to the Child Support Agency and the system, but it creates enormous social, psychological and economic pressures for individuals and the community itself. More importantly, it can lead to heartbreak for the families of such an individual. But it does not stop there. If a person, for whatever reason—perhaps through pressure from the Child Support Agency—takes his life, and there is a debt, the Child Support Agency has the habit of then targeting the mother and father of that person because he may not have any money in his estate. That is the sort of nonsense going on in the Child Support Agency that is creating massive problems out there that we really do have to think very seriously about addressing in the not-too-distant future.

In closing on that point, the capacity to earn issue—because of the way it is applied and the anguish that it is causing through the mental, social and economic pressures it places unfairly on individuals—is, I believe, because it is the only government agency in the country that practises it, unconstitutional. I am getting some constitutional lawyers to give me some advice on that. I put the minister on notice that at some stage I am going to challenge it in the parliament unless the government thinks very seriously about looking at it and changing it in the interests of fairness for the whole of the community in every area of taxation.

Some of the recommendations of the Parkinson task force accepted by the government have already been adjusted and refined. I compliment the minister on that. I know it is a very difficult issue. I know I am a bit of a pain in the butt from time to time when I raise these issues with the minister and the government and talk about them publicly, but I happen to believe that it is time for changes and there are more to be made—(Time expired)

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