Child Support and Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Ending Financial Abuse in the Child Support Scheme No. 1) Bill 2026
Ms STEGGALL (Warringah) (10:48): For too many families, a system designed to support children has been used to control, intimidate and financially punish the parent often caring for them. Government processes can compound that abuse. Child support is a legal responsibility.
It is money for children. It pays for food, housing, uniforms, activities and everyday needs. It should never be a bargaining chip or a weapon after separation.
Unfortunately, all too often it is. With almost $2 billion in unpaid child support across Australia, reform is long overdue in this sector. Having formerly worked as a barrister in the family law system, I appreciate all too well how this system is often weaponised.
I welcome the Child Support and Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Ending Financial Abuse in the Child Support Scheme No. 1) Bill 2026. It must be the first step, but it should be followed by deeper reform. That's why I will be moving a second reading amendment that addresses the gaps in this legislation and outlines the further action needed to close the loopholes within the child support system that are exploited by parents that are not complying.
The test of these reforms is simple: are children receiving the money they are owed, the money that they need; and, in circumstances of domestic and family abuse, are victim-survivors safer through the implementation of this legislation? My Warringah office regularly hears from single parents struggling with rising costs while trying to cover child support. The financial control often continues long after separation.
The difficulty for many parents once they are alone in raising their child, if they have the other parent not complying with the provision of child support for the costs of that child, is that it becomes a really incredible struggle. Unfortunately, recovering child support that is due adds to acrimony and tension and is often a dangerous situation. We know financial control often continues long after separation.
Last year, I convened a domestic and family violence roundtable with frontline services in Warringah. They described women facing financial insecurity, housing instability and complex government systems after separation, and that is just not good enough. A Warringah resident wrote to me about this bill.
She said: 'For many women who have left a marriage involving some form of abuse, financial or otherwise, any dealing with a former partner is wrapped in fear. It is often easier to do it alone and carry the burden, and men like my ex-husband rely on that, which means they avoid that responsibility they owe to their children.' Parents are left weighing the risk of retaliation against the need to secure child support.
Some are pressured into the Private Collect system, where parents arrange payment directly. Others stop chasing payments altogether, because another confrontation feels too dangerous and threatening. As a former family law barrister, as I've said, I've seen how ongoing financial disputes around child support in particular and often the resentment around having to pay it impact the cost of restarting after a family breakdown.
Often, it can also be a toll of juggling different financial priorities and pressures for the payee parent. But then there's also the pressure on the parent to whom the child support is owed, because they have that greater care of responsibility of the child and they are having to meet those costs in real time. What we have to remember overarchingly in this system—and I urge parents and parties to try and focus on this aspect—is that children need support regardless of the separation and regardless of who they're living with.
Their needs don't change. That is the ultimate intent of this system. At the end of 2025, approximately $1.95 billion was outstanding in the agency collect system alone.
Around 83 per cent of recipient parents are women. More than one million children depend on child support, and government figures identify almost 100,000 parents and carers in the scheme who have experienced or are at risk of family and domestic violence. The government's own survey of separated parents found that more than half of the surveyed Private Collect recipients were underpaid by an average of around $2,000 a year.
That means children are going without the necessary supports for them to go to school, to learn, to participate in activities, to be healthy, and to be housed and clothed appropriately. A quarter received no child support during the year at all—that is just unacceptable. Nearly one in five said they agreed to Private Collect to avoid conflict or violence from a former partner.
It's clear the Private Collect system really has major flaws, because, whilst it's chosen to avoid conflict, it doesn't result in payment of child support. Nearly one in five said they agreed to Private Collect to avoid conflict or violence from a former partner—that is a telling statistic. In Swinburne University research examining women's experiences of abuse, 80 per cent of respondents to the relevant question reported that their former partner had replaced physical abuse with financial abuse and control through child support.
These are patterns of coercive control. Payments can be withheld, tax returns can be delayed for years, income can be minimised through businesses, and, all of a sudden, everything is a cash economy and not reported. Those that suffer are the children.
Repeated objections and disputes through the system can force a victim-survivor back into contact with a perpetrator or a former partner, which consumes time and money but just adds to the stress and the trauma of trying to rebuild a life post a traumatic relationship. Under Private Collect, family tax benefit can be calculated as though assessed child support has been received, and a parent can lose family assistance from the government on the basis, or the assumption, of money that, on paper, should have been received but has never been paid.
And then the Commonwealth—just absolutely appallingly, I think—pursues that parent for that debt that arises to the Commonwealth. I've urged the minister and the government to change the system so that that debt under the family tax benefit is pursued directly against the parent owing the child support, not against the parent that has not received the child support and is now being made to incur a debt, because, too often, it is single mothers that the Commonwealth pursues for that debt.
My understanding is it's seen that they are more likely to comply than the parent that is refusing to pay the child support owing. Single Mother Families Australia has highlighted that the maintenance income test reduced family payments to around 300,000 single-parent families by $810 million in 2021-22. We don't know how much of that reduction was based on child support that was never paid.
The Commonwealth Ombudsman, in a June 2025 report titled Weaponising child support: when the system fails families, found that Services Australia lacked the policies, the strategies and the training to proactively identify and respond to financial abuse. It made eight recommendations, and therefore the government has the evidence to act and go even further than this bill.
I've pressed for reform in this sector since 2021 and the family law inquiry, when we raised mounting debt, weak enforcement and children's financial security to the government. In October 2024, I attended the parliamentary launch of the black-box report, alongside women with lived experience and advocates, because the problem with this debt arising to the Commonwealth through the overpayment of the family support payment is that it impacts credit ratings and it impacts single mothers' ability to put a bond down to rent, to have housing, to have a job.
The consequences of this system are far reaching. The black-box report documented how the design of the scheme enabled the abuse that they described, and I wrote to the then minister for social services, calling for action. The risks were acknowledged, but change has taken far too long.
I want to recognise Terese Edwards and Single Mother Families Australia, along with Women's Legal Services Australia and the many women who have spoken publicly about this problem, often at considerable personal risk in sharing their stories and experience. Their persistence had finally brought this issue to the parliament and the government for action. The government has now committed $182.6 million over the forward estimates to a safer and more effective child support system.
I welcome that investment, but major reform—further reform than this bill—is long overdue. The bill, in a sense, makes a few practical changes across three schedules. First, it gives the Child Support Registrar greater discretion to refuse harmful applications for assessments or changes of assessments, because we know that repeated applications can be a tactic of harassment and control.
Services Australia must recognise and stop that pattern. Second, it removes mandatory requirements to exchange documents in certain processes, and it allows the registrar to decide what information needs to be shared and how. These decisions need to be informed by clear reasons, fair review pathways and trauma informed training.
This is, of course, relevant where you have domestic and family violence and coercive control, where the sharing of personal information adds to the risk and danger. Third, it improves options for agency collect and for recovering arrears after retrospective reassessments. Government has greater enforcement capacity than a parent facing threats.
Government has to be able to step in here. Fourth, it allows a three-month pause on recovery of certain family tax benefit debts. A pause offers breathing space, but the government must stop pursuing these debts based on money never received.
I don't think this is a good enough measure. The fact that you're pausing it does not mean you are transferring the liability to the parent that actually owes the child support, and that's who the government should be pursuing. It can do so through garnishee orders, through the ATO and other means.
Fifth, it allows parents in specified overseas jurisdictions to apply directly to Services Australia for child support. I support these measures, but there are still substantial gaps, and my second reading amendment calls attention to the three immediate priorities. First, the ATO needs stronger monitoring and enforcement of persistent non-lodgement of tax returns with better data matching and information sharing with Services Australia.
Failing to lodge a tax return should never become an effective strategy for concealing income and reducing child support owing. Information sharing must also expose deliberately hidden income with appropriate safeguards. Second, more agency collect cases must be able to use automatic employer withholding so child support is deducted from wages and transferred promptly.
Parents should be able to move safely and easily from private collect when payments break down, and the agency should pursue arrears, not the victim-survivors. Third, the system must recognise the reality of children completing secondary school. Where a young person turns 18 during the break between school years and is continuing full-time secondary education, child support should not fall away because of a calendar cut-off.
For a student turning 18 between year 11 and year 12, the cost of their final school year continues regardless of their birthday, so I want the government to examine how care is assessed. Overnight arrangements do not capture every school run, every medical appointment, every day-to-day responsibility. The formula should better recognise actual care giving and costs relating to children.
Finally, the family tax benefit must reflect financial reality. If assessed child support has not been paid, government should not reduce assistance or recover a debt as though it has. We should also examine whether the maintenance income test itself is fair to families relying on these payments.
A three-month pause is not a lasting solution. We will know the consequences of these reforms and whether or not they're working when fewer children are left without financial support, when arrears begin to fall, when abusive applications are stopped and when parents can seek help without exposing themselves to further harm. I call on the government to report publicly on these outcomes, not simply count the number of applications processed or the legislative changes passed.
We want to know: How much unpaid child support is actually recovered? How quickly are debts enforced? Are victim-survivors safer?
Are family tax benefit debts being avoided? That will be accountability and a measure of success. I return to the words of the Warringah constituent, a woman, who said to me that it was easier to carry the burden alone than deal with her former partner who frightened her.
No parent or child should be left in that situation, so I welcome the bill and support it but I urge the government to finish the job and close the loopholes. I move the second reading amendment as circulated in my name: That all words after "House" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words: (1) acknowledges that: (a) there is almost $2 billion of unpaid child support in Australia; and (b) just over 100,000 parents and carers in the child support system are recorded as having experienced or being at risk of experiencing family and domestic violence; and (2) notes that: (a) the bill is the single biggest reform to the child support system focused on safety, preventing harm through the system, and ensuring children receive the money they are entitled to; and (b) further action is needed to close loopholes that are exploited by perpetrators, including by: (i) improving the Australian Taxation Office's surveillance and enforcement regarding non-lodgement of tax returns by perpetrators; (ii) increasing the number of agency collect agreements that can access the automatic garnishment of wages to make more timely deductions and transfers; and (iii) extending a child support assessment for a young person undertaking full-time secondary education where their 18th birthday falls before 1 January between school years".