Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

The Albanese Labor Government is committed to a child support scheme that ensures adequate and fair financial support for all children of separated parents.

This bill is a technical amendment to ensure the child support scheme operates as it is intended.

In the context of 2023 AAT proceedings, Services Australia identified concerns that 2018 amendments to child support and family assistance legislation are not operating as intended due to unclear drafting.

Instead of strengthening interim period provisions, the 2018 amendments unintentionally limited the circumstances where an interim period can apply. Under the legislation as currently enacted, an interim period can only apply at the start of a new child support assessment or Family Tax Benefit claim, where the breach of the care arrangement occurs at that point.

In February 2024, the Federal Court confirmed that the 2018 amendments did not operate as intended and observed there is an urgent need for legislative reform to simplify this.

Through this bill, the Government is taking action to quickly resolve the legislative uncertainty and restore Parliament's intent from the 2018 bill. Passage of this bill is essential to ensure child support legislation clearly outlines where interim periods can apply.

Interim periods are an important and longstanding feature of the child support scheme.

Child support payments and Family Tax Benefit entitlements are based on a parent's percentage of care for a child. Ordinarily, this is based on each parent's actual care of the child.

However, where a written care arrangement is in place for a child—such as a court order—a parent's percentage of care can be based on that written care arrangement for an interim period.

Interim periods are important because they encourage compliance with written care arrangements. Interim periods prevent a parent who is withholding care of a child from financially benefitting through higher child support and FTB payments. They also ensure the other parent is not financially worse off through higher child support obligations and lower FTB payments.

Interim periods encourage participation in family dispute resolution. For an interim period to apply, the person with reduced care must take reasonable steps to have the care arrangement complied with. For example, trying to work with the other parent to reinstate the care arrangement, seeking assistance from a dispute resolution service, starting legal proceedings or notifying the police that the child has been taken without consent.

It can be a lengthy and expensive process for parents to resolve parenting matters through the family law system. Where they have done so, the orders made reflect the court's decision about what is in the best interests of a child. The orders should be followed unless special circumstances exist.

Importantly, existing rules will continue to apply to protect parents and children who are at risk of violence or where there are child welfare concerns. If a care arrangement has changed due to a fear of violence or neglect, Services Australia is able to ensure the child support and FTB payments are based on actual care and an interim period would not apply.

The bill clarifies provisions in child support and family assistance legislation to ensure interim periods are available in a broader range of circumstances, consistent with long-standing policy and practice. While not known as an 'interim period', child support assessments have been able to reflect the contravention of a court order or parenting plan since 1998. Interim periods in their current form have existed since 2010, when child support and family assistance legislation were aligned to have the same care determinations.

The bill includes retrospective provisions to ensure past decisions made since 2018 and in line with the intended policy are legally valid. This is important to minimise the impact on parents and carers who may otherwise be financially disadvantaged by having these decisions disrupted.

I commend the bill.

Susan McDonald (Queensland, National Party, Shadow Minister for Resources) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The coalition will be supporting the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Child Support and Family Assistance Technical Amendments) Bill 2024. This bill is a technical amendment seeking to ensure the child support scheme operates as intended. The coalition supports this urgent change because it provides legislative certainty to participants in the child support scheme by ensuring the legislation clearly outlines where interim periods can apply and how the child support scheme operates as intended. This bill amends the Child Support (Assessment) Act 1989, the child support act, and A New Tax System (Family Assistance Act) 1999, or the family assistance act, to restore the intended operation of interim period provisions for determining a person's percentage of care for a child.

The bill proposes technical amendments to support the administration of the child support and family assistance schemes as intended under the legislation. The bill will restore interim period arrangements to address the unintended consequence of the protecting children act. It will provide that interim periods are available as they are intended to be, consistent with the longstanding policy in the child support and family assistance schemes to encourage carers for a child to comply with a written carer arrangement where one is in place. The bill will also protect the validity of certain interim period determinations that were made between the commencement of the protecting children act amendment and the commencement of the amendments to be made by this bill. The bill includes retrospective provisions to ensure past decisions made since 2018 and in line with the intended policy are valid. This is important to minimise the impact on parents and carers who may otherwise be financially disadvantaged by having those decisions disrupted.

The bill is a technical amendment to ensure that the child support and family assistance schemes operate as intended under the legislation.

Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak briefly to the Social Services Legislation Amendment (Child Support and Family Assistance Technical Amendments) Bill 2024. The Greens support this urgent reform, which fixes previously poor drafting and clarifies when interim periods are available. These interim periods are periods when the actual amount of care of a child doesn't reflect the written agreement for what it will be.

I want to note that I'm really pleased to see that there are existing rules to protect parents and children who are at risk of family and domestic violence that will continue to apply in these so-called interim periods. This means that, if a care arrangement has changed due to a fear of violence, Services Australia is able to ensure that child support and family tax benefit B payments are based on actual care and that the parent at risk of violence will receive an appropriate amount of financial support. I thought it was really important to just reassure anyone listening that those protections still apply despite this technical fix to the interim period definition.

While this urgent reform is needed, the child support system is in desperate need of so many other reforms, specifically on the weaponisation of child support by perpetrators of coercive control and other forms of family and domestic violence. I hear countless examples of single mothers incurring the family tax debt while on child support because the other parent has failed to lodge their tax return. Likewise, there are many times that a parent self-reports a reduced income, without the need to provide evidence, in order to minimise their child support liability. In fact, one-third of parents in the child support scheme currently have a debt. Collectively, there is $1.7 billion of child support owed to single parents across Australia, and most folk would know that it's mostly single mums. That's over 200,000 people with an outstanding tax return. Critically, calculating child support relies on having accurate figures. These debts that are owed are causing parents, especially single mum families, distress and hardship, and many people are already feeling that, because poverty and homelessness already disproportionately impact women and children.

I wrote to the minister about this very issue last year. I was contacted by a Queensland constituent who wanted to remain anonymous. She had separated from an emotionally and financially abusive ex-partner. She has primary custody of their kids, and she raised concerns with the child support agency six years prior that her former partner was underreporting his income for child support purposes. The child support agency initially refused to investigate her allegations unless she agreed to provide evidence. So that's her having to provide evidence of his income, not him having to provide evidence of his actual income. And the child support agency advised that they'd be required to present that evidence to her former partner. She made it clear that her ex-partner was controlling and could be a risk to her and their children if he knew that she had provided evidence to the child support agency. She was subsequently advised that, where there was a history of family and domestic violence, security measures could be put in place to protect her against her former partner knowing that she'd disclosed evidence against him. On that basis, she agreed to provide the evidence.

However, after a very long delay, the child support agency advised that there was no way to avoid disclosing the evidence or its source to her ex-partner, so she was given a bum steer, and her safety was disregarded. She reluctantly agreed to the evidence being disclosed so that the reassessment could proceed. Based on that evidence, CSA ultimately agreed to adjust her ex-partner's income up by nearly $80,000. It was still less than half of what she believed he was earning but significantly more than he was reporting. If she had felt safe to disclose evidence initially, her children could have been supported by much higher payments from their father for a much longer time. She now continues to fear that she and her children will be at risk when her ex-partner is advised of the reassessment and that he'll continue to underreport his income.

This story is just one of so many similar stories that my office has heard. I note that a recent report by Swinburne University of Technology called Financial abuse: the weaponisation of child support in Australia confirms that this situation is not uncommon. That report outlines the prevalence of underreporting or falsification of income by child support payers and the ways in which neglecting to submit tax returns is used as a tool of financial control. The National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children recognises that victims-survivors who are reliant on a former partner for financial support are particularly vulnerable to ongoing abuse.

This is not, unfortunately, the only problem with the system. Stakeholders and many mums also tell me that the rate of child support is viewed as unrealistically low and that it is also an unreliable form of support. Women are frustrated with the inability to budget and with the normalisation of a dysfunctional system. The Women's Economic Equality Taskforce recommended removing the child support maintenance income test from the family tax benefit part A calculations to establish certainty of FTB A payments for financially vulnerable families and to prevent child support being used as tool of financial abuse. I want to see some action on that from this government, along with all of the other Women's Economic Equality Taskforce recommendations.

That task force also recommended that the single-parenting payment be restored back up to age 16. Remember it always was 16 and then former prime minister Gillard slashed it down to the age of eight on the day she gave the misogyny speech. Thankfully, this government belatedly restored it—not up to 16; just up to 14. The WEET are saying it should be 16. We agree. It should be 16. It always should have been. It never should have been slashed.

There are so many hurdles—too many—that prevent child support being paid, but many of these are fixable. I'm pleased to see the establishment of the Child Support Expert Panel last month to make recommendations to the Department of Social Services on child support matters. I acknowledge the government do appear to be committed to further reforms in this space, and I really look forward to working with them on those reforms.

Single Mother Families Australia has advocated a requirement for income to be lodged and known annually, for child support to be collected and paid and for the loopholes of accepting the minimisation of income to be stopped. The Greens support those asks, and we're ready to expedite any government reforms that do that.

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank senators for their contributions and commend the bill to the Senate.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.