Child Support and Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Ending Financial Abuse in the Child Support Scheme No. 1) Bill 2026

Ms DOYLE (Aston) (11:30): I rise to speak in support of the Child Support and Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Ending Financial Abuse in the Child Support Scheme No. 1) Bill 2026. At its heart, this bill is about something very simple: when parents separate, their children should be supported. Children should have what they need to grow up safely, to learn, to participate in their community and to have the opportunities every child deserves.

Where a parent has a responsibility to financially support their children, that responsibility should not disappear because a relationship has ended. The Child Support Scheme supports around one million Australian children, yet there is almost $2 billion in unpaid child support across Australia. Just over 100,000 parents and carers in the system are recorded as having experienced or being at risk of experiencing family and domestic violence.

Behind those numbers are families trying to make ends meet. There are groceries to buy, rents to pay, school uniforms to purchase and medical appointments to attend. Child support is not simply an administrative process.

It is part of the economic security of separated families. When payments arrive on time and in full, they help children access the essentials they need. When payments do not arrive, somebody still has to cover those costs, and too often that responsibility falls entirely on the parent who is already doing the day-to-day work of raising the children.

I have heard this directly from people in my electorate of Aston. One constituent—let's call her Sarah—contacted me about her experience of trying to recover child support owed for her children. In mid-2025, Sarah discovered that her husband had not paid child support for some time.

The unpaid amount had already grown to more than $4,000. Sarah had to contact child support services herself before the issue was properly addressed. Even then, it took several months and multiple phone calls before payments were reinstated.

Because her husband was unemployed, the payments that followed were intermittent and very small, around $60 at a time. The debt continued to grow, eventually exceeding $5,000. Then, tragically, Sarah's husband died suddenly in May this year.

Child support services attempted to recover the outstanding debt from his estate, but there were no funds available. After several attempts, the matter was closed. The debt remained, but there was effectively no way to recover it.

Sarah and her husband had been separated, although they had never divorced. Following his death, his superannuation fund did not recognise her as entitled to his death benefit. There was also no Centrelink payment or other mechanism to replace the child support her children would otherwise have received.

As Sarah explained to me, she had gone from trying to recover money already owed to her children to having no prospect of recovering that debt and no future child support. She was left carrying the entire financial responsibility for raising their two children. I recognise that recovering a debt where a person has died and left no assets is complicated.

There is no simple solution to every circumstance a family might face, but Sarah's experience highlights something important. A child support debt is not just a number on a government record. It represents money intended to support a child.

It represents food, clothing, housing, education and the ordinary costs of growing up. When that money does not arrive, the costs do not disappear; they fall on somebody else. Sarah's story reminds us why an effective child support system matters.

Calculating what a parent owes is only part of the job. Children need to receive the support they're entitled to. It also reminds us that families can find themselves in circumstances where the existing system does not provide all the answers they need.

We must keep listening to those experiences as we continue to improve the support available to families. This bill is an important part of that work. The government has committed an additional $182.6 million in the 2026-27 budget to make the child support system safer and more effective and to help more children receive the support they are owed.

The reforms address vulnerabilities in the system, including situations where processes can be used to harass a former partner or where a parent can be left with a debt despite not receiving the child support that was supposedly paid. The bill contains three schedules. Schedule 1 addresses the harmful use of child support processes.

Currently, a parent can make repeated applications or objections that require their former partner to respond, even when similar applications have previously failed. For someone acting in good faith, this might be frustrating. For someone who has experienced family violence, it can be much more serious.

Repeated applications can mean repeated contact, repeated requests for personal information and repeated disruption to a person's life. Where the process is deliberately misused, it can become a form of harassment. This bill gives Services Australia discretion to refuse certain applications where proceeding would cause harm to a person.

It will also allow certain objections to be dismissed where they have little or no prospect of success or would have no more than a marginal impact on the child support case. These changes recognise that safety must be considered when government systems operate. The bill also changes the way information is exchanged during certain child support processes.

Under the current rules, entire copies of documents provided by one parent may have to be shared with the other parent. These documents can contain contact details, employment information and financial records. For someone who has experienced family violence, disclosing that information can create genuine safety concerns.

A parent may need to seek a reassessment of child support because they believe the amount being paid is incorrect, but they may hesitate because they fear that information about their workplace, finances or whereabouts could be disclosed. That can leave a parent and their children without the support they are entitled to. The bill replaces the mandatory approach with a more flexible model.

Services Australia decision-makers will be able to redact documents or provide written or verbal summaries of relevant information. The aim is straightforward: parents must have a fair opportunity to respond to information relevant to their case, but they should not have to disclose irrelevant personal details that could put them at risk. Schedule 2 strengthens protections for parents dealing with Family Tax Benefit debts arising from child support reassessments.

Under current arrangements, when a paying parent lodges overdue tax returns, their child support liability may be recalculated retrospectively. This can create an additional child support debt for previous years. At the same time, the receiving parent's Family Tax Benefit may be reassessed, leaving them with a debt of their own.

The problem is that the receiving parent may not have actually received the additional child support. For parents using agency collect, the system can account for the child support actually paid. Where parents have private arrangements, however, Services Australia does not have the same visibility over whether the additional money has been received.

This bill provides important new protections. For parents who remain in private arrangements, collection of a resulting Family Tax Benefit debt will be paused for three months. This gives them time to consider their options, including pursuing the outstanding child support, moving to agency collect or seeking an appropriate exemption or waiver.

The bill also allows parents moving from private arrangements to agency collect to request collection of certain outstanding child support debts raised in the previous three months, even if the debt relates to an earlier period. This matters because a debt may have accumulated over several years but only become apparent when overdue tax returns are lodged. The bill also allows paying parents to move their cases to agency collect.

That is important because direct financial contact between separated parents is not always appropriate or safe. Around a quarter of child support parents with a family and domestic violence indicator are paying parents. The reforms recognise that both receiving and paying parents may need protection from unwanted contact and that having Services Australia manage payments can provide an additional layer of separation.

Schedule 3 improves access to child support for eligible parents living overseas. Under these changes, parents in certain overseas jurisdictions will be able to apply directly to the Australian child support system. A child's entitlement to financial support should not disappear because they live overseas.

Where an Australian parent has a child overseas and refuses to meet their financial responsibilities, the Australian system should not inadvertently make it easier for that parent to avoid those responsibilities. The measure will be accompanied by a grant to a non-government organisation to assist sole mothers in the Philippines whose children's Australian fathers have refused to provide support.

Again, the purpose is practical. It is about helping children receive the financial support they are entitled to. These reforms sit within the government's broader commitment to supporting families and responding to family and domestic violence.

Since 2022, this government has expanded paid parental leave to 26 weeks and introduced superannuation on those payments. It has extended single parenting payments to eligible parents whose youngest child is under 14, expanded childcare support and invested more than $4.4 billion in responding to family, domestic and sexual violence. These policies address different challenges, but they share an important principle: government systems should help families achieve greater security not make difficult circumstances harder.

There is more work to do to improve child support collection and compliance. This bill is the first stage of a broader reform program, and further measures will seek to ensure payments are made more reliably. That matters because the costs of raising children do not wait while a dispute is resolved.

The grocery bill still arrives. The rent still has to be paid. Children still need school supplies, health care and opportunities to participate in their community.

Sarah's experience in Aston brings that reality home. Her children still had all the ordinary costs of growing up, even as the child support debt grew and the prospect of recovering it disappeared. No single reform can prevent every hardship a family might face.

But we have a responsibility to identify where systems are failing and make practical improvements. That means listening to the people who use those systems, the organisations supporting them and the independent bodies that identify weaknesses. It means recognising that financial abuse can continue after a relationship ends and that government processes must not provide another avenue for coercion or harassment.

It means remembering that the purpose of the child support system is not simply to calculate a payment; it is to help ensure children receive the financial support that they need. When parents separate their circumstances change, but their children's needs do not disappear. Children still need a safe home, food, healthcare, education and the chance to participate in community life.

The child support system cannot resolve every difficulty that comes with separation, but it must be fair, effective and safe, and it must do what it can to ensure parents meet their financial responsibilities. As a local member of parliament, I know that people do not expect government systems to be 100 per cent perfect. They do expect us, though, to listen, to take problems seriously and to act when we can make things a bit better.

For families who rely on child support, these are not abstract policy questions. They are questions about whether there is enough money at the end of the week, whether children can participate in school activities and whether a parent can navigate a government system without putting themselves at risk. This bill takes practical steps towards a child support system that is safer, fairer and more effective.

It addresses known vulnerabilities and provides greater protection around sensitive information. It introduces new safeguards for parents facing family tax benefit debts and it improves access to child support for eligible families overseas. Most importantly, it keeps the focus where it belongs: on the children.

For these reasons, I support this bill.