Child Support and Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (Ending Financial Abuse in the Child Support Scheme No. 1) Bill 2026
Ms JARRETT (Brisbane) (13:00): When a relationship ends, caring for a child does not. A child still needs breakfast before school. They still need shoes that fit.
They need a secure roof over their head. Those needs don't disappear just because a relationship ends, and a child should never become the bargaining chip in an argument between adults. That's the principle behind child support, and that's why we have introduced this important legislation.
The purpose of the bill is pretty straightforward. It makes it harder to use the child support system to control another person and, importantly, it helps children receive the support that they need. Financial security gives families choices.
It lets a parent plan for next week's groceries, keep the car running, buy that textbook that's needed and make decisions without having to seek the advice of an ex-partner. And for somebody rebuilding their life after an abusive relationship, those ordinary choices can mean freedom. When we discuss domestic violence, we must understand that leaving a relationship doesn't necessarily end the abuse.
Control can continue through money, and it can continue through threats to withhold payments, demands for contact or deliberate creation of uncertainty. A separated parent knows the rent's due on Friday and child support is due on Wednesday, but the payment doesn't arrive. They send a message.
There's no answer. They send another message. This time there is, but there are conditions attached.
Perhaps they have to agree to something completely unrelated to the childcare payment. Perhaps they're insulted. Perhaps they're reminded that another person still has the power to make their week fall apart.
The amount involved might seem modest to someone on a comfortable income, but, to that household, it could determine whether there is enough money for food and for rent. When someone deliberately uses that vulnerability to exert control, we should recognise that behaviour for what it is and, as a government, we should not allow rules in our system to give that behaviour room to operate.
Labor's response is to examine those rules and to change them. The government reported almost $2 billion in unpaid child support and almost 100,000 parents and carers within the same scheme who have experienced or are experiencing family and domestic violence. Those figures demand attention.
Behind them are people and families and households. There are people like Naomi, who made a decision to divorce her partner due to coercive control. She didn't have the energy or funds to fight it all in the courts to keep the house that they bought together.
She's now forced to live in an unstable rental market while trying to provide for her two children. Her ex-partner uses the current system to avoid paying child support by only working six months in the year and moving his money around to reduce his overall yearly income. These are cruel tactics, and they are often used to punish women and children who are just trying to make it through—and ultimately it does punish the children.
We owe those families a system that can take their circumstances seriously. The tactic of wage withholding has been identified and will be considered in further planned legislation, but this example highlights that individuals are using the child support system to control another person. One of the bill's most significant measures addresses the misuse of administrative processes.
It would allow Services Australia to refuse certain harmful assessment applications and dismiss objections with little prospect of success or no material effect on the case. Refusal decisions would be reviewable. And that matters, because paperwork carries a human cost.
Imagine another situation: a parent repeatedly facing unsupported claims that their circumstances have changed. Every new claim means another letter. It means another deadline.
It means searching for documents, time away from work and time spent in the evening gathering documents together and not helping with homework. There's also the anxiety of wondering what will come next. A process that seems routine from an office can feel relentless to the person at the other end.
Of course, parents must be able to change an incorrect assessment. People lose jobs, incomes change, care arrangements change and decisions, of course, can be wrong. A fair system must respond to those realities.
The challenge is to exercise these new powers carefully, with evidence, clear reasons and meaningful review. We should expect that standard from any government. Supporting this bill means supporting both its protective purposes and proper accountability in how it operates.
A second important measure concerns personal information. The bill will replace the current mandatory document exchange in assessment-change and objection processes with something a little safer. This will allow relevant information to be shared through redacted documents or summaries.
The principle here deserves broad support. An assessment might require information about income. It doesn't follow that the former partner needs every personal detail contained in the supporting paperwork.
For someone who's experienced, say, stalking or intimidation, information about their workplace, their daily routine and where they go may carry serious consequences. Think about the effort involved in rebuilding safety. A person may have moved house, changed their job and established new routines while maybe even carefully limiting those who know who they are et cetera.
Seeking the financial support their child needs should not undermine that work. We should be able to design an assessment process that gives each party a fair opportunity to respond while protecting information that is unnecessary to the decision. It's a practical responsibility of government.
Privacy in this setting is about a person's ability to go to work, to collect their children and live without fear of unwanted intrusion, and it's about confidence. If people believe that seeking a fair assessment could expose them to harm, then some will feel that they have little real choice. A right that someone is afraid to exercise is a right that requires stronger protection.
The bill also addresses a particularly troubling interconnection between child support and the family tax benefit. In private collection arrangements, late tax returns can retrospectively increase a payer's child support liability and trigger a family tax benefit debt for the receiving parent, even where that extra child support may not have been received. Let's stop and consider how that would feel.
You've got a couple of kids, you're on your own and you've arranged your household around the money available to you, then a decision about your former partner's past income changes at calculation, and suddenly you're facing a government debt that's connected to money that never reached your account. A parent in that position could reasonably ask, 'How am I supposed to repay money I never had?' Technical rules make sense when applied to real lives.
The bill proposes a three-month pause and recovery of these debts and pathways to address them, including moving to agency collect. It would also expand recovery of newly raised child support arrears when parents make that move. These provisions may sound administrative, but their significance really is deeply practical.
They recognise that a receiving parent should not simply be expected to absorb the consequences of another person's delayed reporting. They also recognise that a family may need government assistance to pursue money owed to them. We should judge these changes by whether parents can understand and use those pathways.
A letter full of unfamiliar terms really doesn't cut it. People need clear explanations, timely assistance and decisions they can follow. The burden of navigating the remedy must not become another obstacle for the family already carrying the problem.
Another reform would allow a paying parent as well as a receiving parent to request agency collect arrangements, and the bill would also enable direct applications from parents in reciprocating overseas jurisdictions, which would be subject to the usual eligibility rules. Both changes reflect principles that should guide this debate. First, we must assess safety by looking at conduct and circumstances, and we should never assume that the person making payments cannot also experience abuse.
Government collection can provide a useful boundary where direct financial dealings create opportunities for pressure or unwanted contact. Second, responsibility to a child should not evaporate at an international border, and geography should not become an excuse for abandoning responsibility. That brings me to the Labor values underlying this reform.
Labor believes public institutions should help people live with dignity, and that requires more than establishing a scheme and assuming that its existence guarantees fairness. We have to look at how it works, who can navigate it, who feels safe using it, who bears the consequences when another person exploits it and what happens when the rules produce an outcome that ordinary Australians would recognise as unjust and unfair.
Those questions belong at the centre of government. We also need an honest discussion about payment difficulties. Some parents do face genuine hardship.
Someone may become seriously ill, lose employment and have an unexpected reduction in income. An effective child support system needs accurate assessments, accessible processes and a reasonable response to genuine changes in personal circumstances. But it also needs to distinguish those situations from deliberate evasion or coercion.
That distinction matters to families, and it matters to parents who meet their responsibilities despite difficult circumstances. A parent who pays reliably is contributing to their child's security, and that contribution deserves recognition. And a parent managing the daily costs deserves to receive what is owed without having to navigate or negotiate away their dignity or safety.
We should also be precise about what this legislation can achieve. A bill with the words 'ending financial abuse' in its title cannot by itself eliminate every form of financial abuse. But it can close particular opportunities for harm.
It can create stronger protections. Those are worthwhile advances, but they must be followed by competent administration. Staff need training and time to recognise patterns of coercion, information handling needs care, parents need accessible services, complaints need proper investigation, and debts that can lawfully be recovered need sustained attention.
The government has described this bill as the first stage of a broader reform package, and the minister has identified further planned legislation concerning wage withholding and automatic travel restrictions for certain child support debts. A child support system cannot repair every hurt caused by a separation. It cannot restore trust between adults.
But it can establish dependable boundaries. It can say that a child's needs can continue. It can say that financial obligations carry weight.
It can say that seeking support should not expose a parent to unnecessary danger or harm. And it can ensure that government processes do not become convenient instruments of coercive control. That's why this reform is so important.
A parent should be able to seek assistance and find a system that listens, explains, acts and helps. A child should be able to grow up with greater stability without adult conflict determining whether their basic needs are met. And a person leaving abuse should have a fair chance to rebuild their lives.
Our task is to turn those principles into rules that work and then ensure that those rules deliver. I support this bill as a meaningful step towards that goal—for safer processes, for fairer treatment, for responsibility that continues after separation and, above all, for the children whose needs deserve to come first.