Two generations of children have grown up since the Child Support Scheme (CSS) was introduced in June 1988 with the promise of “putting children first” when their parents’ relationship breaks down. Yet, the CSS is beset with many of the same problems that led to and surrounded its establishment.
Many fathers resent, resist and evade paying child support for their children after separation. Many mothers continue to fear and experience harassment and violence from their ex-partners after their relationship has broken down. The upshot is that too many children of separated parents are living in poverty.
The first parliamentary inquiry into the CSS was tabled 30 years ago, just as I became director of child support policy in the Department of Social Security (DSS). Preparing and coordinating the Government’s response to the Joint Select Committee’s (JSC) 163 recommendations took three years, by which time the Government had changed.
Shortly after the election of the Howard Government, I briefed a backbenchers’ meeting on the Government’s proposed response to the JSC report on child support — a Queensland Nationals male parliamentarian thumped the table and hollered, “The Government’s changed and the bureaucrats need to realise that!” The thump ushered in a smaller government approach to child support policy, and changes that favoured fathers, especially high-income earners. There have since been many changes of government, inquiries, and reviews into the CSS.
Fast forward to December 2024 and another inquiry and report: the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services (PJCCFS) report, Financial Abuse: an insidious form of domestic violence. The Committee asserts that child support “can be used as a tool to perpetrate financial abuse and in some instances the non-payment of child support is a form of family violence.” How is this so?
Private collection
Rewind to 1994, when the Child Support Agency (CSA) collected 66 percent of child support. The 1994 JSC report recommended the CSA be given discretion to shift liable parents to private collection if they had established a 6-months record of reliable payment, “except where there are special circumstances … such as those involving duress or domestic violence” (emphasis added).
The Howard Government’s response endorsed “shifting to private collection, both to encourage parents to take responsibility … and to limit Government intrusion.” It removed legislative restrictions on private collection and went a step further by requiring parents to have private collection unless there was family violence or a history of non-payment. The CSA was envisaged as the “safety net” when private collection arrangements fail.
Next, the CSA was moved out of the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) in October 1998—at that point, it collected child support for 58 percent of cases with the remainder collected privately. The CSA now collects for only 49 percent of cases; private collection accounts for 51 percent of cases. The shift to private collection saves the Government millions in administration costs.
In 2023-24, $4.2 billion was owed in child support by about 600,000 payers. Services Australia (SA), which now houses the CSA, does not report the percentage of child support payments paid on time and in full. We know that for CSA collection cases, three quarters of payers are “without debt” at the end of the financial year, and of the one quarter in arrears, only 56 percent have arranged to pay their child support debts.
For private collection cases, SA makes the improbable assumption that 100 percent of child support owed is actually paid. Successive governments have resisted calls by parliamentary committee inquiries to monitor and publish actual rates of private collection of child support; in 2016 the Government agreed to this “in-principle”, but in practice, nothing changed. More recently, the Albanese Government did not support the same recommendation by the 2019 JSC on Australia’s Family Law System to do so. Its 2023 response echoed the Howard Government’s philosophy of “non-intrusive” child support arrangements with “minimal government involvement”, committing instead to reviewing cases where private arrangements break down.
As it stands now, private or CSA collection is determined by which parent applies for a child support assessment. Where the paying parent (83 percent of whom are fathers) applies, private collection is the default arrangement. Where the recipient/payee (usually the mother) applies, CSA collection is the default arrangement; however, the payee can switch—a choice that makes her susceptible to coercion from the other parent.
A 2024 online survey (by Professor Kay Cook and others) of 675 self-selected single mothers in the child support system, found that almost half of those with private arrangements agreed to it under duress from the paying parent as a means of him not paying. Most mothers who chose CSA collection at the outset were victim-survivors of violence who did not want to deal with their ex-partners.
When mothers switched from private to CSA collection, it was mostly to avoid conflict with their ex-partner. The switch most commonly resulted in child support payments either commencing or being paid at a higher amount, but in some cases, the payer stopped paying or paid less child support. Another limitation of private collection is that when a payer is in arrears and the other parent moves to CSA collection, the CSA only collects 3 months of arrears (or 9 months in exceptional circumstances).
Thus, private collection facilitates under-payment and non-payment of child support, and coercion by liable parents in a private realm beyond the scrutiny of Government agencies.
Violence and child support
Since its inception, the CSS has been dogged by allegations that it would lead to increased violence against women. The CSS was designed in the absence of reliable data on the national incidence of family/domestic violence, or its prevalence in the population of sole parents.
In 1990, I surveyed a random sample of 1,000 sole parents on pensions for my public policy dissertation on the CSS. Even using a narrow definition of violence (threats of violence or actual physical harm, not emotional or verbal abuse, or coercive control), 55 percent of these sole parents had been in a violent relationship with their former partner.
The incidence of violence declined following separation, but it did not cease. Of the 497 respondents to my survey, 80 sole parents were threatened with violence by their former partner, and 22 were physically harmed at least once by their former partner’s violence before and after taking action for child support. In addition, two women were subjected to violence by their former partner for the first time only after taking action for child support, and one woman was threatened for the first time.
More up-to-date data are now available on the prevalence of violence. In 2022, Dr Anne Summers revealed that 60 percent of Australian single mothers were victim-survivors of physical and/or sexual violence by a former partner (2016 ABS Personal Safety Survey data). In the Cook survey, 78 percent of the mothers experienced some form of violence when they separated, and at the time of the survey, more than half reported emotional, psychological, and financial abuse.
Since the beginning of the CSS, parents eligible for child support have been obliged to seek it from the other parent as a condition of receiving certain Social Security payments. There are provisions for exemptions, including for those who fear violence. Despite the high prevalence of violence experienced by the population of sole parents, only 15 percent of parents are exempt from the ‘maintenance action test’. A further 17 percent are neither exempt nor seeking child support—foregoing both Family Tax Benefit and child support. The Cook survey found that the main reason women take neither step is to avoid conflict with their ex-partner.
Chasing child support
As far back as 1994, the JSC considered the amount of child support debt “a major threat” to the Scheme, and pointed out “significant deficiencies in … enforcement by the CSA which need to be urgently addressed”.
Despite the CSA’s extensive enforcement powers, for example, to intercept tax refunds, withhold child support from wages and bank accounts, and prohibit overseas travel, $1.7 billion in child support debts have accrued over the life of the CSS. Longstanding loopholes, such as various means of minimising income and not lodging tax returns, enable continued evasion of child support responsibilities.
Mothers in the Cook survey reported negative repercussions from their own debt collection efforts including the other parent’s anger, violence, refusal to pay, instigation of Family Court action, and refusing to return children. Fifty percent of private collection payers reacted violently. Importantly though, irrespective of whether the mother had CSA or private collection, all these consequences occurred to a lesser extent when the CSA took the debt recovery action.
The future of child support
Removing the CSA from the ATO, and the shift to private collection of child support has undermined the effectiveness of the Scheme and compromised the safety and financial security of sole parent families.
The PJCCFS report recommends the return of the CSA to the ATO and mandated CSA collection unless private payment of child support can be substantiated. I think reforms need to go further, in the light of new evidence about the pervasiveness of family violence at all stages of the child support process.
CSA collection does not guarantee safety or payment, but it helps keep separated parents at arm’s length from one another, making it the safest option for parents to secure child support. This should be restored as the primary collection mechanism.
Private collection should be available only to payers who have established a good payment record for 12 months, with the onus on them to continue to verify their payments quarterly. Where payers move to private collection and cease meeting their responsibilities, they should swiftly and automatically revert to CSA collection with debts pursued.
Family violence and poverty are not private matters; they are complex, pernicious societal problems to be addressed by effective public policies, including the CSS. The Government owes it to the 1.1 million children in the CSS and to future generations of children of separated parents to put children and safety first.
Fiona Carberry
Fiona Carberry was formerly Director of Sole Parent Policy, and Parenting Policy sections from 1995-98 in the Department of Social Security (DSS). She also worked in the Social Policy Divisions of DSS and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet from 1991-1994. She has a Master of Arts (Public Policy) from the University of Melbourne.