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Mr SCHULTZ (Hume) (9.23 p.m.)—Over the last 12 months I have compiled 4,500 submissions from all round Australia on the body that I refer to as the national shame of Australia—that is, the Child Support Agency. Out of those 4,500 submissions I have, with the able assistance of a researcher, sifted through and compiled those submissions which carry detailed evidence of the way in which the Child Support Agency operates. Let me inform the House of a case relating to one of those submissions, which is the tip of the iceberg with regard to the problems associated with this government agency.
A couple’s 14-year-old child runs away from home because of a dispute with the father about his possible suspension from his local high school. The couple are frustrated and bewildered after nine months of attempting to get the child to come home and receiving absolutely no assistance at all from the New South Wales Department of Community Services or the New South Wales Police Service, who tell the father that the child has a right to stay where he wants providing the people he stays with are not harming him or he is not in trouble with the police. The child is drinking alcohol and the parents are concerned about him getting into unlawful activities.
The child tells police and DOCS that he wants to live with his aunt, the father’s sister. The parents were advised that it was this fourteen year-old’s choice as to where he wants to live. The parents are further advised to give him his clothes. The parents are also unable to obtain school records relating to the child as he has changed his address without the parents knowledge. They are advised by the school that they cannot forward any correspondence to the parents because he is no longer living with them.
The rights of the parents are further violated by the bizarre actions of the Child Support Agency approving the aunt’s application for child support from the parents of this child. The CSA then advise the parents in writing that they have calculated the amount of child support the parents must pay the aunt. We have a situation here whereby a child who is 14 years of age has been assisted to live with his aunt despite the biological parents’ opposition and concern for his safety and wellbeing. In other words, their rights as parents have been abused. They have been forced to pay child support—18 per cent each of the earnings of each of those individual parents.
There are a number of questions that need to be asked about this particular Child Support Agency case, as there are a significant number of questions to be asked about the other 899 I have so far processed and which I hope will culminate in about 1,150 to 1,200 cases. The first question is: (1) Under what act or sections of an act of this parliament has the Child Support Agency taken this action to assist in removing a child from his biological parents? (2) Under what section or sections of federal legislation has the Child Support Agency made a decision to force biological parents to pay child support payments to a person who is not a parent of the child? (3) Is the child and/or the person he is living with receiving any payment from Centrelink or any other Commonwealth social security agency and/or department and, if so, under what Commonwealth legislation is this payment being made to this person?
I believe this example is a serious abuse of the rights and responsibilities of law-abiding citizens and parents, and it is typical of the abuse of power which appears to be endemic in the Child Support Agency based on the 899 further cases I have to date. I can assure you, Mr Speaker, and I can assure the minister of the Crown on my side of politics responsible for this agency in this parliament that they are going to be hearing a lot more about the illegal activity and the way in which the Child Support Agency has contravened not only a number of federal acts of parliament but—more importantly, I believe, based on constitutional advice I have received—contravened the Constitution of this great nation of ours and I am going to bring them to account for it.
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