Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak in support of the Child Support (Registration and Collection) Amendment Bill 2011. I firmly believe that every child deserves to be emotionally and financially supported by both their parents. The importance of a culture where both parents provide the emotional and financial support for their children can never really be underestimated. Indeed, good parenting and adequate financial support is central to ensuring that children are able to reach their full potential.

Increasingly, research identifies the positive, life-enhancing health and wellbeing impact of being brought up in a family where the parents remain together to support one another and to support their children through all the challenges that life presents. Yet, as the member for Fowler, Government Whip, has so eloquently and personally articulated, the reality is that one-third of marriages break down, as do long-term relationships, and we are confronted with the reality that family relationships and breakdown are just a part of the way we live these days. One of the most contentious issues in relation to this bill is how the law deals with families where parents separate with regard to child support. Indeed, our system of child support is one of the means through which we ensure that children whose parents have separated receive the emotional and financial support they deserve. In a recent class that I had in a course entitled 'Issues in adolescent development', I had the benefit of having mature age students and young students who had just left school in the same classroom. One of the things I try to model in terms of excellence in education is to allow students as much space as possible to choose their own issues to explore. It just so happened that in this class I had a couple of young people who wanted to explore the impact of family breakdown on them and their peers who had experienced this loss and suffering. They went to great lengths to gather up-to-date information about how that impacts generally, and they were certainly very generous in sharing their own perspectives.

The interesting thing was that there were mature age adults in that classroom who had gone through family breakups and felt that they had managed them very well who were articulating that their children had suffered a lot less than was being articulated by the young students aged 17 or 18 telling the story of the difficulty of family breakdown. The conversation that came out of it was that so much of the depth of impact of a family breakdown depends on how the parents are able to interact and how safe the children feel after that period of intense difficulty. In our own conversations in that classroom, students were very easily able to articulate that, where parents were able to negotiate a practical way to manage their lives as they moved forward to becoming a family that had separated rather than living together in one house, the outcomes were so much better.

I want to put on the record too that, in addition to this conversation between younger and older members of my class, we got to really understand in a deeper way the whole theoretical concept of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. We do need food and we do need shelter. Yes, we need love. I would love to think that every day all Australians got to the peak of that pyramid and got up to self-actualisation. But the chances of achieving your maximum potential, the chances of becoming the best Australian that you can be, are severely compromised if at night you are struggling to have a full belly, a warm bed to sleep in or the love and care of two people who have a right and responsibility to be a part of your life in a sustained and important way.

That is why this bill becomes particularly important. As stated by the Minister for Human Services, who has just joined us, while most parents do the right thing and pay their child support in full and on time, sadly, we know that not all parents meet their child support obligations. There can be a range of reasons for this being the case currently. Sadly, in the media we see the terrible outcomes of acrimonious split-ups. Just recently there was a murder-suicide and the tragedy of that weighs on the entire community. At times of great sorrow and at times of great loss, people might not be able to make the best decisions but, while as adults we might have those impulses that take us away from the interests of children, the reality is that we also have deep and lifelong-lasting responsibilities as parents to ensure that the children we bring into the world are given every opportunity. In some ways, I think that becoming a parent is the moment where you have to learn that it is not all about you anymore. In that opportunity for growth, great things are possible. When the conflict of a family breakup happens, it is even more important that that discussion surfaces about who is at the centre of our considerations and that we make sure that, of all the people who are given the first and the most significant support, the children come first.

The means by which the Child Support Scheme is able to ensure that child support is paid therefore needs to be very effective. This bill is aimed at improving the effectiveness of the child support program with a register to ensure that parents comply with their responsibilities in supporting their children financially. The first means by which the bill does this is by enabling the Child Support Register to delegate certain powers and functions to individuals outside the Department of Human Services. Primarily, this will enable the Child Support Register to delegate its debt collection activities to external service providers who are specialised in debt collection. This method of delegation is currently utilised by Centrelink and it has been found to be effective. I understand that there could be hesitation in the community about enabling the Child Support Register to delegate its debt collection activities to external providers. But this outsourcing to skilled external providers does have the potential to lead to an increase in the successful identification and collection of outstanding child support debt. This therefore has the potential to ensure that more children have financial support that they deserve. I understand the great difficulties that parents who have separated face when they manage the parenting of children. Much of this is managed through parenting plans under the Family Law Act. However, as we know, child support can be a source of acrimony between separated parents. Indeed, issues regarding child support are often a barrier to constructive relationships between separated parents. This legislation puts the child's needs ahead of the parents and firmly recognises the benefits that children attain when they receive the financial support they need. By enabling the Child Support Register to delegate its debt collection activities to external service providers, the Child Support Program will be more efficient in managing other activities. These other activities are related to compliance and the more efficient and effective service of other child support customers.

In my previous occupation as a high school teacher, and then as an academic specialising in education, I came more and more to understand through my students the importance of a stable family life and ensuring good outcomes for children regardless of which parent they live with. It is simply critical that parents find a way to manage through this to enhance the outcomes for young people. By enabling the Child Support Program to be more efficient and effective, there is the potential that child support issues between separated parents can be better managed.

This legislation will also enable the Child Support Program to ensure the consistency of service delivery options. The delegation of collection activities will create the potential for the Child Support Program to lower its operational costs. This is important given the need to ensure that we effectively and carefully manage the resources of the Commonwealth. This bill will contribute to the development of greater efficiency in the Department of Human Services.

But there is a second part to the bill that is also important for us to explore and to put on the record today why it should proceed. This amendment bill also reforms the criminal provisions relating to the system of employers withholding a paying parent's salary or wages. The withheld salary or wages is paid to the Child Support Program to satisfy a child support liability. The criminal offences concern employers who do not abide by the system of withholding payments to the Child Support Program. The problem with the current criminal provisions is that they are ambiguous and therefore difficult to apply. Section 46 of the act as it currently stands does specifically outline the physical element of the offence. The issue is that the current provision only creates an obligation penalty. It does not specify whether the offence is created by an omission or an action. As stated by the minister, a literal reading of the current provisions suggests that an employer could be penalised for complying with this section. These issues have resulted in the office of the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions advising the Child Support Program that it would be reluctant to prosecute an employer under section 46 of the act. This is an undesirable situation because it means there are real issues in regard to how this act is enforced. That is why this legislation is important. We are talking about a real issue with a real impact that is currently not enhancing the life outcomes of young Australians who are caught in the crossfire of difficult negotiations between parents over their responsibilities.

Issues with the effective enforcement of criminal sanctions lead to difficulties in ensuring that children receive the financial support they need through this Child Support Program. The new subsection 46(4A) for makes clear that an employer will be fined 10 penalty units if they fail to make a deduction that they have been required to do under the act. The new section makes clear that an offence is committed when an employer fails to take the required action. This same problem is found in sections 47, 59 and 72W of the act, and those provisions have likewise been amended to clarify that it is an 'omission' not an 'act' that attracts a criminal liability. By providing for a criminal sanction that is unambiguous the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions will be better able to prosecute employers who do not comply with the act; furthermore, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions will be more likely to be successful in such actions, ensuring that children do ultimately receive the financial support that they deserve.

We must also recognise that the criminal sanctions act as an important deterrent to employers with regard to noncompliance with their obligations under the employer-withholding process. If the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions experiences difficulty in enforcing the criminal provisions of the act, its ability to act as an effective deterrent is limited. Additionally, improving the ability of the Child Support Program to prosecute employers who fail to comply with requirements under the act will help the integrity of the Child Support Program. One wonders why it could be that an employer who is aware of such a situation acts in complicity with a non-paying parent. Relationships are interesting things in life—relationships between husbands and wives, men and women, mothers and fathers and employers and employees—and our loyalties are sometimes a little skewed in the wrong direction. This legislation is to make sure that children are put at the heart of any decision making and that they come before all else in order to give them the best advantage in getting on with life.

Population growth on the Central Coast has been among the many young families. We have a high percentage of families. The 2006 census gives a figure of 27,250 couple families with children under the age of 15 years who are dependent students. Additionally, there are 10,264 single-parent families with children under the age of 15 or with dependent students. It is really important to recognise that, in contemporary Australia, the composition of families varies, but we want to make sure that families that are not the typical, traditional family are not disadvantaged in any way and that their disadvantage is not made any worse by a failure to have the laws in place to support their best possibilities in life. Many Australian families, including families in my electorate, do experience parental separation.

I firmly believe that the amendments we have discussed here will advance the cause of ensuring that children are the priority in the child support system. They will provide for an effective incentive and, where necessary, a deterrent to employers to ensure that they comply with the act. I commend the amended bill to the House.

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