Child Support and Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Ending Financial Abuse in the Child Support Scheme No. 1) Bill 2026
Ms COFFEY (Griffith) (12:15): Many Australians navigate co-parenting arrangements. My own household is one of them. Listening to the contribution from the member for Farrer today, it seems he would suggest that my situation is the common Australian situation and the situation for all Australians.
My husband and I are raising our boys alongside their father and his wonderful partner. We share costs, decision-making and care. It is a true partnership: four adults prioritising the youngest people in our family.
I must say, not a day goes by when I am not thankful and incredibly conscious of what a privileged, fortunate position my boys and I are in. Co-parenting is hard, even when all adults involved put the children at the very centre of decision-making. But we know that my situation is not the situation for many people living in Australia who are raising children.
For many in our community who rely on formalised child support arrangements, raising children can become an absolute nightmare if one parent chooses to weaponise a system created to support our littlest Australians. The member for Farrer hasn't been in his seat very long, and I'm sure as his time goes on he will experience exactly what those of us on this side have experienced, which is that I can't think of a fortnight that goes by in my office in Griffith without a local constituent coming in for assistance with navigating the complexities of the child support system.
Some have been suffering in silence for years, trying with all their might to fight for themselves and their children while their ex-partner weaponises the very systems we have in place to help them. I've spoken with single mums who are at the end of their tether trying to keep their children fed, healthy, happy and housed, all on their own. It's hard enough for single parents to keep the bills paid and food on the table, let alone paying for uniforms, sport, health care and so much more.
My electorate office team and I have seen constituents whose ex-partners have gamed the system to harm and harass, have used the system to access personal information about them and have not been held accountable, while the single parent is left to raise a child on their own with no support. Single parents deserve assistance with supporting their children and deserve support and guidance from the system in place to assure this.
The Child Support and Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Ending Financial Abuse in the Child Support Scheme No. 1) Bill 2026 does this by delivering further measures to improve on-time payments, strengthen debt collection, and address weaponised and financial abuse in the system. These are some of the most difficult conversations I have in my work as a local member.
Parents arrive at my office carrying folders of correspondence, records of missed payments and years of decisions that they have struggled to understand. They have spent countless hours on the phone trying to explain what has happened, trying to get someone to listen and trying to get the support their children deserve. Some are frightened that taking the next step will provoke another round of harassment.
Others are simply exhausted from having to prove over and over again that they are telling the truth. For these families, child support is far more than an administrative process. It is about financial security, dignity and the ability to provide their children with the opportunities every parent wants for them.
That is why I welcome this bill, which is the beginning of a much broader reform. The child support scheme was established by the Hawke Labor government in 1988. Its purpose was straightforward: children should continue to benefit from the financial resources of both parents, regardless of whether their parents live together.
Nearly four decades later, that principle remains just as important. Today, the scheme supports about one million Australian children, with approximately $4.3 billion in child support liabilities assessed each year. For most families, the system works as intended, but for too many others, the process designed to support children has become another way for an abusive former partner to exercise control.
There is a staggering amount of money that children are missing out on. Whilst I hear the member for Farrer saying that parents want to do the right thing, the reality is and the facts show that that is not always the case. More than $2 billion in unpaid child support has accumulated across Australia.
There are more than 100,000 parents and carers in the scheme recorded as experiencing or being at risk of experiencing family and domestic violence. These figures expose the need for change. They tell us we need a child support system that does more than calculate what a parent owes.
We need a system that makes sure the money reaches children, protects families from abuse and holds those who deliberately avoid their responsibilities accountable. That is what the Albanese Labor government is committed to delivering. In the latest budget, our government announced an additional $182.6 million for a safer and more effective child support scheme.
This bill forms part of that commitment and represents one of the most significant reform programs since the child support scheme was established in 1988, and there is reason for that. For the first time in many years, we are undertaking a comprehensive program of reforms across the system, from the initial assessment of child support through to its collection, payment and enforcement.
We are looking at the processes that can be misused to cause harm. We are looking at how assessments are calculated and how payments are collected. We are looking at barriers that prevent parents from recovering unpaid debts.
We are examining how Commonwealth agencies can better identify and respond to financial abuse. This bill represents the first tranche of legislative reforms in a much larger program. It addresses some of the most immediate opportunities for financial abuse and coercive control, with further legislation to follow.
The reforms have been informed by the experiences of separated parents, the work of advocates and recommendations from the Commonwealth Ombudsman and Tax Ombudsman. Financial abuse can take many forms. It can involve deliberately withholding child support payments, hiding income or failing to lodge tax returns.
It can involve repeatedly lodging applications and objections, forcing a former partner to respond to the same claims again and again. It can involve exploiting government processes to gain access to someone's personal information, even putting their physical safety at risk. These behaviours can continue long after a relationship has ended.
A parent might have escaped an abusive relationship years earlier yet still find themselves being harassed through the child support system. In June last year, the Commonwealth Ombudsman published a report on the weaponisation of child support. The report found serious shortcomings in the way Services Australia identified and responded to this form of abuse.
These findings reinforced what advocates, legal services and parents have been telling us for years. I want to acknowledge Terese Edwards, chief executive of Single Mother Families Australia, for her longstanding advocacy on these issues. I want to acknowledge the many community legal centres and family violence services that work with parents navigating the child support system.
Women's Legal Services Australia welcomed the government's budget commitment, saying: This is a landmark commitment, and we congratulate the Albanese government for acting on the evidence. The organisation has raised the need for further investment in specialist legal services, and that is an important part of the ongoing conversation. National Legal Aid welcomed the investment too, stating: These reforms are an important part of keeping families safe in Australia.
I thank these organisations for their work and their willingness to share their experiences and the experiences of families they support. The first schedule of this bill addresses is the deliberate misuse of child support processes. At present, a parent can repeatedly lodge applications to change an assessment or to object to decisions.
Even in cases where there is a clear pattern of harassment, Services Australia has limited powers to stop those processes from continuing. Each new application can force the other parent to gather evidence, respond to claims and revisit painful circumstances. This bill gives Services Australia new discretionary powers to intervene, allowing Services Australia to refuse certain applications where proceeding would cause harm.
These powers recognise that harm extends beyond physical violence. It can include psychological harm, intimidation, mental distress and conduct that affects a parent's ability to care for their children. The safeguards are important too.
Parents will retain rights to challenge relevant decisions, including access to independent review through the ART. The intention is to protect people from deliberate harassment without preventing genuine applications or removing procedural fairness. The bill makes another important change to the sharing of personal information.
Currently, parents involved in certain assessment and objection processes can be required to exchange entire documents. These can include bank statements, employment information and other sensitive personal details. Imagine a parent who believes her former partner is understating their income.
She wants a reassessment so her children receive the child support they are owed, but pursuing that reassessment could require her to disclose information about her workplace, financial transactions or daily activities. For someone escaping family violence, that information could place them at risk. No parent should have to choose between seeking a fair child support assessment and protecting their personal safety.
Under this bill, Services Australia will be able to share relevant information in safer ways. Decision-makers will be able to redact unnecessary personal details or provide written and verbal summaries. The other parent will still receive the information needed to respond fairly to the case, but they will no longer have an automatic entitlement to every document regardless of its relevance or the risks involved.
This is a practical change with the potential to make an enormous difference to the families that need it. The second schedule tackles another problem that has caused considerable hardship: the interaction between child support and the family tax benefit. This is an issue that can be difficult to explain, but its consequences for families are very real.
Under the current arrangements, a parent who privately collects child support can be treated as having received the full assessed amount, even if the other parent has not paid it. Now imagine a parent who has failed to lodge their tax returns for several years. Their child support assessment has been based on provisional income figures.
Years later, they finally lodge those returns. Services Australia recalculates their income and determines that they should have paid thousands of dollars more in child support. That money has never reached the parent who is raising the children, yet the reassessment can create a family tax benefit debt for that parent that's calculated on the assumption that the additional child support was received.
Let me repeat that. A parent can end up owing the government money based on child support they never actually received, and this can happen through no fault of their own. That is simply not fair.
This bill creates a 13-week pause in the recovery, which gives parents time to understand what has happened, seek advice and decide how to respond. They can pursue the outstanding child support privately, seek an exemption or waiver or move to agency collect and ask Services Australia to recover the child support owed to them. This will allow the family tax benefit debt to be recalculated to zero, and future adjustments will reflect the additional child support actually received.
This is a much fairer way to treat parents who have already been left financially disadvantaged by someone else's failure to pay. The third schedule addresses access to child support for children living overseas. Australia currently has reciprocal child support arrangements with 99 overseas jurisdictions, but parents in some of these countries face unnecessary barriers when seeking an Australian child support assessment.
They may need to apply through an overseas authority, even when dealing directly with Services Australia would be simpler. These arrangements can cause delay and confusion. This bill will allow eligible parents in specified overseas jurisdictions to apply directly to Services Australia.
Existing eligibility requirements will remain in place, and safeguards will prevent overlapping child support liabilities. I want to finish by thanking my electorate office staff and, in particular, Ash, who regularly helps families work through child support matters that are complicated, painful and deeply personal. I am grateful to the constituents who have trusted us with their experiences and trusted us to act to support them.
Many constituents have spent years trying to get the support their children deserve. They have persevered through missed payments, repeated applications and processes that have sometimes left them feeling powerless. Their stories deserve to be heard, and they deserve a serious response.
After nearly four decades, we have an opportunity to make substantial changes to the child support scheme. This bill is the first legislative step in one of the most significant reform programs since the scheme began in 1988. And, with further reforms to come, we are working towards a system that better protects families and holds parents accountable for their responsibilities.
I want every parent who comes to my office seeking help to know that their government is listening. I want them to have the confidence that the system will protect their safety, treat them fairly and help them secure the support they and their children deserve. Above all, I want every child to have the financial support they are entitled to receive.
Child support exists for children. It should never become another means of controlling or punishing the parent who cares for them.