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

Ms CLUTTERHAM (Sturt) (12:29): I rise today 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. It is indeed a privilege to contribute following the member for Griffith, who explained why this legislation is before the House of Representatives with such empathy and kindness.

In Australia, child support exists to ensure both parents make a fair contribution to their child or children's financial needs. It may be required to be paid to a biological parent or to a non-parent caregiver, such as a grandparent or other family member or legal guardian if they're taking on caregiving roles to support the child, as so many people do. Everyone—married, divorced, separated, de facto, single or share house—understands the value of financial stability in the home.

Then, when it comes to children, when essential expenses are covered, caregivers can better focus on supporting and raising a child. This is why the government mandates that both parents cover child-rearing costs after a divorce or separation, with the aim that the child's basic needs be met and that they experience a balanced living standard in both households.

The principle that underlies this, regardless of the change to a relationship status between parents, is that both parents still have a financial responsibility to their children. The government mandates this because governments have a duty to set legal and ethical boundaries. Governments work to create laws that minimise or prevent things like exploitation, discrimination, abuse, modern slavery, bribery and corruption, and they work to create laws that minimise harm and protect the rights and freedoms of Australians, including children.

Typically, child support is made by one parent to another, although this can change over time according to the individual financial position of each parent and the number of hours that they spend as primary caregiver. In some cases, the primary caregiver will not be a biological parent but will be a non-parent caregiver, like a legal guardian or a family member, like a grandparent who assumes full-time responsibilities for the child.

What does child support cover? When you hear the list, it's astonishing that people elect not to pay it. Child support covers financial support for things like food; housing; rent or mortgage payments; utilities and maintenance; clothing and footwear; education, including school fees and supplies like uniform and stationery; and then routine medical costs, including basic dental care, prescription medications, vaccinations and necessary medical treatments.

It does seem to me that contributions of this nature should be second nature. Divorced or separated, whatever the situation is, if you have children, you should provide for them, and you should want to provide for them. You should want to make sure your child doesn't suffer financially, miss out on health care, on education or on opportunities.

You may not be on good terms with your former partner. It happens. But you should want to support whoever the primary caregiver is or the eligible recipient of child support for the good of your children.

You should want to ensure that your children live in an environment of economic security and stability, where they're not wondering how the next meal is going to be paid for, not wondering whether they can go to the dentist or get a run-of-the-mill script for antibiotics. You should understand that one million children in Australia depend on child support and that children in single-parent households face a much higher risk of falling into poverty and that single-parent households are most likely to be headed up by women.

You should easily be able to understand and comprehend that when child support is paid and paid in full and paid on time, your children get essential items like food, housing, education, healthcare and participation in community activities. You should understand that child support makes a real difference to your children. Many people do.

They pay, they pay in full and they pay on time because they are decent human beings. Despite the things that have happened in their lives, to their family, to their relationships, the children are not at fault and the children deserve to have their basic needs met. This seems like an uncontroversial thing, but it's not.

Loopholes exist in the child support system, and people take advantage of them. Former partners are harassed. Debts are run up—sometimes huge debts—in the name of former partners.

Personal information is taken, wrongly, and then weaponised. Income is deliberately hidden so that payment determinations are lower. Sometimes payments are just not made.

The figures are shocking. They're actually quite sad and they're unacceptable. Other speakers on this bill have referred to them, but you cannot refer to them too many times, because the problem needs to be highlighted again and again and again so it's understood and so there's collective support to take meaningful and prompt action.

Currently, the backlog of unpaid child support is $2 billion. There are 200 individual child support debts of over $150,000. One parent's debt to their children is more than $2 million.

So the claim by the member for Farrer that parents are willing to pay child support is not always true. That is why we are bringing this legislation to this place. The child support system needs to change to ensure that all parents who are required to pay pay.

The system needs to change in a way that reflects the feedback of those with lived experience, who work in the child support sector, who have been affected by the weaponisation of the system and who have been left in a desperate situation because of the failure of a former partner to pay. There are three key objectives in this bill. Firstly, it addresses processes in the system that people have been able to use to cause harm and suffering to former partners and to their children.

Secondly, it expands access to the Australian child support scheme for children overseas with one parent in Australia. Thirdly, importantly, it creates new protections for child support recipients against family payment debts that are racked up by former partners. This third objective is particularly critical and is covered by schedule 2.

Child support payments and the family tax benefit are linked to ensure that, where a parent is able to receive child support from their former partner for the benefit of their child and it is safe to do so, they seek that child support, and any government income support is adjusted to account for that income. This link can be and has been weaponised. When a paying parent does not submit tax returns for an extended period, the child support liability must be based on provisional income.

If that parent then submits multiple years of tax returns, the child support liability may be retrospectively recalculated, and this often results in the parent owing more child support than they actually paid. In these cases, the receiving parent's family tax benefit entitlement may then also be retrospectively assessed, resulting in a family tax benefit debt for the receiving parent through no fault of their own.

For parents in private arrangements, of which there are many, the government has no visibility of when that additional child support is paid to the receiving parent, meaning the family tax benefit debt against the receiving parent remains whether or not the paying parent actually pays the additional child support they owe. This means a receiving parent in private arrangements may be punished by having a family tax benefit debt raised, but with no extra child support actually paid.

By virtue of this bill, the government will implement new processes that ensure parents entering the system are given more information about the advantages and risks of choosing private arrangements as opposed to agency collection arrangements, including the protections that are available against family tax benefit debts if they choose the latter option. The changes proposed by the bill prescribe that those parents who are owed money can choose to pursue the extra child support debt from the paying parent themselves.

Importantly, for parents who continue to choose private arrangements, this bill pauses the collection of family tax benefit debts for three months after those debts are raised, giving parents the opportunity to consider their options and take appropriate action. This could include pursuing the extra support from the paying parent or applying for an exemption or special circumstances debt waiver, which would extinguish the family tax benefit debt.

The receiving parent could also elect to transition to an agency collection service and to ask to have the outstanding child support recovered by the government. If they were to do this, it would cause the family tax benefit debt to be reassessed against the child support arrears that had been received—assumed to be zero—which would also extinguish the family tax benefit debt.

Now, really critically, the onus is shifting, pursuant to this bill, with respect to circumstances in which parents elect to move from private arrangements to agency collection arrangements. Currently, the government assumes that the extra child support that was due was paid. This assumption will be reversed by this bill, in that the government will assume that the extra child support that is due has not been paid, such that the family tax benefit debt will be recalculated as zero.

In 2025, the Commonwealth Ombudsman released a report called Weaponising child support: when the system fails families. This report, alongside the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services inquiry into financial abuse, and the Taxation Ombudsman's report Identification and management of financial abuse within the tax system, identified an urgent need to address the weaponisation of child support to protect parents at risk of family and domestic violence and financial abuse.

In response, this bill introduces measures to make the Child Support Scheme safer and to reduce the ability of people to weaponise the system. It provides the registrar with the discretion to refuse applications and dismiss objections. It allows the registrar the discretion to determine how relevant information should be shared, including by written or verbal summary or the exchange of documents, which may be redacted.

It provides for the enforcement of arrears and overpayment amounts that were the result of a retrospective variation to the registrable maintenance liability during a period of private collection. It allows paying parents to choose agency collection arrangements, and it allows parents living in prescribed reciprocating jurisdictions to make child support applications directly to Services Australia.

In short, it closes the loopholes. These measures address matters that were raised by people with lived experience of the child support system. They will address issues arising from family and domestic violence, including addressing concerns about financial abuse—just so commonly crystallised.

It will reduce opportunities for the weaponisation of the Child Support Scheme, ensure that the scheme operates in a manner that is consistent with administrative practice and policy intention, and provide better pathways for family assistance and child support to complement each other and work more efficiently. Most importantly, it closes loopholes that have allowed people required to pay child support to get away with not paying or paying less.

How disappointing that we must legislate for this—but we must. To those who participated in the consultation: we hear you and we will take steps to protect you. To those who are required to pay child support but who selfishly and cruelly seek to get out of it by exploiting loopholes: stop it.

Stop causing harm. Stop causing suffering. Just pay what you owe.

Be a decent human being and support your children. I commend the bill to the House.