Child Support and Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Ending Financial Abuse in the Child Support Scheme No. 1) Bill 2026
Ms BYRNES (Cunningham) (11:04): I rise today in support of the Child Support and Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Ending Financial Abuse in the Child Support Scheme No. 1) Bill 2026. Whatever the circumstances, the breakdown of a family can be deeply challenging for parents and children alike. For families that have experienced domestic, family and sexual violence, it is also one of the most dangerous moments, and the trauma being experienced does not simply stop because the relationship has ended.
As a government, we have a responsibility to ensure that our systems which are set up to help and support both parents and children cannot be used for insidious purposes. We have a responsibility to ensure that a government service cannot be used as a new tool for a domestic abuser to inflict pain and suffering on their victims. Even when violence may not have been part of the relationship, we have heard far too many stories that demonstrate the ability for some parents to weaponise the child support system.
It is abhorrent, and this bill takes important steps to stop it. The child support system is there to help both parents navigate this new dynamic, regardless of whether the relationship is amicable or not, and to ensure that both parties are given fair and reasonable treatment that is in the best interest of the child. At the end of the day, child support is there to ensure that children are not left financially worse off.
It ensures that parents take financial responsibility and helps give their children a decent quality of life regardless of which parent they live with. The system supports about one million Australian children and it is absolutely vital for their security, for their financial stability and for their future. It helps families meet the costs of education, health, housing and food, which reduces poverty and financial hardship.
According to the Australian Council of Social Service and UNSW's poverty in Australia report, 34 per cent of people in sole parent families and 39 per cent of children in those families were living below the poverty line in 2019-20. That's a devastating figure. So, when we hear that there is $2 billion in unpaid child support in this country, it is clear that the system is not working as it should.
Before I get into the changes that the bill will make, I want to share some local stories which demonstrate why we are making these changes. Given the sensitive nature of these cases, I have chosen not to provide the names or any identifying information of those impacted, but each case is one that has come through my office in this year alone. One mum told me that she left her former partner 10 years ago, when her child was an infant, due to violence and drug use.
Because her former partner was a sole trader, the agency would generally assign him a provisional income estimate. According to her, at the end of the financial year, he would report that he had earned no income, and his payments owed would be zeroed. As a result, she said she received little to no child support over that decade despite her former partner appearing to have significant business assets and maintain a comfortable lifestyle.
She has repeatedly been asked to provide the agency with her former partner's contact details, which is information she does not possess, because of court orders aimed at protecting her and her child. She has also been asked to prove that the income he is notifying the agency of is incorrect, which is an onus that should not belong on victims. She lives in constant fear of her ex-partner finding her address and her contact details, and the stress of her situation has a significant impact on her life and her mental health.
When raising this with the Minister for Social Services, the minister agreed that the agency's reported reliance on the information she provided about her former partner was unacceptable, and I was really pleased that, after raising this particular case with the minister, payments were restarted. Dishearteningly, the payments ceased again only two months later, and she was forced to start all over again.
In her words, she said to me, 'I feel this system fails young single parents with abusive or criminal tendencies in their ex-partners.' Sadly, this is not an isolated case. Another mum contacted me about an abusive former partner who owes more than $5,300 in child support and pays less than half of the monthly child support assessed. This particular parent, I have been advised, is more than three years overdue in providing his tax returns, and because he has multiple children in the system the debts being recovered have to be split between multiple parents based on the size of the debt owed to each child.
Hers happens to be the smaller of the two debts. She said: 'While he owns a house, a car, a boat and many other luxuries, my daughter solely relies on me financially and emotionally. In the current cost-of-living crisis, the task is onerous and it is draining.' She called the practice of withholding child support a 'form of neglect'.
Reading these sorts of emails from vulnerable people in my community is simply heartbreaking. Another advocate reached out to me about multiple women whom they are supporting who are survivors of domestic violence struggling with little to no child support as their former partners have not submitted tax returns. One mum was surviving on only $50.
Clearly, this is a systemic issue, and I want to stress that it is not only women who are impacted. I was recently contacted by a father who raised concerns about the way a parent's earning capacity is assessed, as well as concerns about business structures that allow a person's taxable income to be considerably less than their financial capability. He called for improvements to the fairness and efficiency of the scheme.
These are just a handful of examples. It is a problem that we must fix. The child support system cannot be allowed to be used as a weapon against children.
It cannot be allowed to be yet another tool that domestic abusers use to hurt their victims. Reviews by the Commonwealth Ombudsman, the parliamentary joint committees, the Inspector-General of Taxation and key advisory bodies recommended changes to strengthen the system and improve outcomes for families. This legislation is the first step in responding to those recommendations, and I want to acknowledge the incredible work by the Minister for Social Services on this really important legislation.
I know she is passionate about this issue and about addressing domestic violence more broadly, and I want to thank her for making these changes here today. At the last election, the Albanese Labor government made a $183 million commitment to fix every part of the child support system. It's part of our government's more than $4.4 billion investment to address family, domestic and sexual violence by strengthening protections against economic abuse, improving the collection of child support and enhancing the financial safety and wellbeing of children and separated families.
We want to make the system safer—in particular, for women and children experiencing domestic violence. As with the first case I mentioned, many women fear their former partner finding their information, such as where they live or work and their phone number. Right now, a parent seeking a change of assessment may have to provide bank details and home and work addresses.
The law currently requires complete copies of these documents to be provided to the other parent. If you're terrified of being found, having to do this might just stop you from asking for the change. Abusers know this and they use it as a weapon.
We're closing that loophole and we're replacing it with a new alternative information exchange model that gives Services Australia decision-makers discretion over how to exchange relevant information. This might include redacting documents or providing written or verbal summaries. At the same time, we're giving Services Australia discretionary powers to refuse to accept certain applications if they are satisfied that proceeding would cause harm.
They can also dismiss an objection without involving the other parent where they are satisfied that the objection has little or no prospect of success or would have no more than a marginal impact on the child support case. This will put a stop to vexatious applications which require significant engagement with the other parent to resolve so that they can't be used as a tool to harass or intimidate someone.
That's good news for victims, protecting them from unnecessary harm while also ensuring that agency resources aren't routinely tied up in vexatious complaints. This is done by disincentivising them. Schedule 2 of the bill deals with the interplay of child support and the family tax benefit.
At the moment, a parent can end up with a family tax benefit debt because their former partner has not lodged an accurate tax return. Without a tax return, child support and family tax benefit are calculated using an estimated income. If the former partner later lodges tax returns showing a higher income, both amounts are recalculated retrospectively.
This can leave the receiving parent with a significant family tax benefit debt through no fault of their own. If Services Australia collects the child support, the family tax benefit debt can be offset against the backdated child support owed. But under a private collection arrangement, the government may not know whether that backdated child support has been paid.
This can leave the receiving parent with a debt owed to the government when they may not have actually received the additional child support needed to cover it. This can create significant financial stress and an unfair administrative burden through no fault of their own, and this bill makes a number of changes to address situations like that. Parents who remain in a private payment arrangement will have collection of family tax benefit debts paused for three months.
This gives them time to receive the backdated child support and time to decide whether to ask Services Australia to collect it on their behalf. They will also have the opportunity to apply for an exemption or special circumstances waiver for the family tax benefit debt. We'll ensure that parents are fully informed of the benefits and the protections of agency collect at the time that they enter the system.
Parents who move from private collection to agency collect will be able to ask Services Australia to recover child support debts raised in the previous three months, even if those debts relate to an earlier period. At the same time, it will allow paying parents to choose to move their child support case from a private arrangement to agency collect. Finally, schedule 3 will help children living overseas in certain jurisdictions to receive child support from an Australian parent.
This will help prevent Australian parents from using the system to avoid their responsibilities simply because their child lives overseas. I'll also flag that there are further changes to the child support scheme coming. These changes will mandate employer withholding in suitable circumstances and implement automatic overseas travel bans for paying parents with $10,000 in unpaid child support—two very important and necessary changes.
We'll also give the ATO more resources to prosecute more people who refuse to lodge their tax returns to avoid paying child support and improve data sharing between Services Australia and the ATO to catch people who underreport. And we'll ensure that Services Australia staff working on child support cases are more experienced, including more staff with family and domestic violence training.
While these changes respond to recommendations from several reviews, I want to point out that the bill has also been shaped by the very personal stories of real people, like the ones I shared earlier. These are not bureaucratic changes. They are changes with a human face, with real people who are being hurt by a system that can be weaponised against them.
I want to thank each and every person who has shared their individual story with me and with other local members across the country. It is your voices that we have listened to, and it is your voices that have driven change. We hear you and we see you and we will keep doing everything we can to end violence against women and to end the loopholes which enable financial abuse and coercion in Commonwealth systems.
These changes make the child support system safer and fairer. They protect children and their families, and they work to ensure that children in our communities are receiving the support they deserve.