Child Support and Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Ending Financial Abuse in the Child Support Scheme No. 1) Bill 2026
Mr LIM (Tangney) (11:53): I rise to make my contribution to the Child Support and Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Ending Financial Abuse in the Child Support Scheme No. 1) Bill 2026. Raising a child is not easy. Any parent will tell you about the daily cost of raising children.
Food, housing, health care, education, school uniforms, after-school activities—all these everyday essentials have a cost. And these are just the financial costs. There is also the time, the energy, the worry, the stress—and, of course, the love, kindness and care—that come with being a parent.
In situations where there is a parental separation, the Child Support Scheme is intended to make sure that children continue to receive financial support. When child support is paid in full and on time, it helps with the cost of raising a child, and it makes a big difference to a child's life. It helps to reduce poverty and financial hardship for families and children.
But, for too many families, this support is not being paid in full and on time. When that happens, it can have a big negative impact on the children. The reforms in this bill work to ensure that children receive the support they deserve.
The reforms respond to calls for changes to the child support system from the Commonwealth Ombudsman, parliamentary joint committees, the Inspector-General of Taxation and key advisory bodies. My constituents in Tangney have asked for changes to the system so that we can have improved outcomes for their families. I have had constituents speak to me about problems with the system and share their personal experiences as to how they are affected.
A few months ago I had a Tangney constituent reach out to seek assistance after her former partner and the father of her child owed more than $50,000 in unpaid child support. This is a significant amount of money, and it has been causing strain on the family. In addition to all the daily life essentials, their child has additional needs.
In this situation, there's often additional stress and costs, and this family is no different. The mother is maintaining her full-time employment while also providing full-time care to their young child, who often requires increased care structures and support. In this constituent's case, child support payments only happened occasionally and the amount was minimal.
Repayments would typically follow enforcement from the agency or be made when it suited the father—for example, if he wanted to travel. This pattern means that the debt persists with very little reduction. My constituent is frustrated and stressed by this lack of action.
The child support debt has a big impact on this family. This mother's experience is part of the almost $2 billion of unpaid child support in Australia. Around 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.
In the most recent budget, the government announced an additional $182.6 million investment into the child support system to make it safer and to help more children get the support they are owed. Our government is committed to preventing the weaponisation of the child support system and to protecting parents and children from financial abuse. We are delivering on this commitment through reforms to improve every element of the system, from the initial assessment through to payment and compliance.
The reforms include measures to help parents navigate the system more easily, keep parents and children safer and help ensure payments are made on time and in full. These reforms deliver on the government's 2025 election commitment to addressing financial abuse in the Commonwealth system, to closing loopholes which enable financial abuse and coercion. In my time, both as a police officer and now as the member of parliament for Tangney, I have unfortunately seen the human impact of financial abuse and coercion—threats, using the system against another parent, using the child support system to delay, not pay or underpay child support.
I have had constituents talk to me about the very difficult situation parents are put in financially upon separation and being caught up in a system that needs to be improved. The bill is the first stage of the reform program towards a more modern child support system. This bill does several things.
Some parents use the processes within the Child Support Scheme to harass the other parent by, for example, lodging applications that are not done and objections to annoy and abuse the process rather than resolve a genuine issue. These amendments provide discretionary powers for Services Australia to refuse to accept certain applications if they are satisfied that proceeding would cause harm to a person.
They can also dismiss an objection without involving the other parent if the objection has little to no prospect of success or if it would have no more than a marginal impact on the child support case. Currently, when a parent lodges a change-of-assessment application, both parents need to submit their personal information, including their contact details. This information is then exchanged with the other parent.
Personal and sensitive information may be shared. This deters some parents from seeking a change. At worst, this can also create a physical safety risk.
This requirement will be replaced with a new model. Services Australia decision-makers will have discretion on how to exchange relevant information. This could mean redacting documents or providing written or verbal summaries of information.
These amendments also address the link between child support and the family tax benefit, which can be weaponised by one parent. Currently, when a parent can receive child support from their former partner for the benefit of their child, they apply for that support and then their family tax benefit is adjusted to account for this income. When a paying parent does not submit tax returns for an extended period of time, their child support liability must be based on income estimates.
If that parent then submits multiple years of tax returns, their child support liability will be retrospectively recalculated. This often results in the parent owing more child support than they actually paid. The receiving parent's family tax benefit entitlement may then also be retrospectively reassessed, resulting in a family tax benefit debt for the receiving parent.
When this happens, it is especially challenging for parents in private arrangements, because the government does not have visibility of when additional child support is paid to the receiving parent, nor can it deduct the resulting family tax benefit debts from that amount. These reforms help create processes to ensure that parents entering the system are provided more information about private arrangements and the protections that are available against family tax benefit debts when it is the agency that collects the child support.
For those choosing to remain in a private arrangement, other relevant measures include pausing the collection of family tax benefit debts for three months after those debts are raised. This gives parents the opportunity to consider their options and take action. Paying parents can also choose to move their child support case to agency collect.
The proposed changes also address some of the issues around child support for overseas payees. Parents in certain overseas jurisdictions will be allowed to make direct applications through the Australian child support system, making child support assessment easier to access for people outside of Australia. There are many children born overseas to an Australian parent.
The government will not facilitate an Australian parent escaping their responsibility to a child born overseas. This measure is accompanied by a grant to a non-government organisation to assist sole mothers in the Philippines who have a child with an Australian who has refused to support their child. The reform in this bill built on the government's $4.4 billion investment to tackle family, domestic and sexual violence by strengthening protection against economic abuse, improving the collection of child support, and enhancing the financial safety and wellbeing of children and separated families.
The reforms in this package have been intentionally chosen and carefully designed to address known problems in the system. Child support makes a difference to children every day, and these reforms help make the system safer, fairer and more effective.