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Source: hansard
Mr SCHULTZ (Hume) (9.15 p.m.)—Once again I rise in this House to bring to the attention of the parliament and the community another set of problems related to the way that the Child Support Agency operates and what appears to be the uncaring attitude of two ministers of the Crown and a parliamentary secretary. I will read a letter from one of my constituents to illustrate the point:
Dear Sir,
I’m writing to you in regards to a matter I have recently had with the child support agency where I believe I have been unfairly treated.
In March ’05 I stopped full time work as my father had taken seriously ill. So I decided to move to Barmedman to become his full time carer, this was not a career choice and I hope he recovers. Consequently I am in receipt of a carer’s pension but still trying to maintain my home in Picton where I had hoped to move my father when he is well enough. As I am maintaining two homes 400 km apart things are tight. But he is my dad.
As I had not been able to work and I was due a tax return and a debt to CSA I applied for a release of my tax return from CSA. The most important of these being some traffic fines (my licence has since been cancelled). As I require my licence to fulfil my role as carer, maintain access to my children and to facilitate my return to work (Truck driver).
These were not good enough for the CSA. And further more they did not allow me any appeal. As a consequence everybody loses (most of all me). I can’t see my kids, it would be difficult to return to work and pay a higher rate of maintenance, and as I am in a small Riverina town with no service’s, drive my father to town occasionally.
The decision by CSA has left me at wits end, very near bankrupt and am left with a bitter attitude as I fail [to see] how I can support a system that won’t allow me to support my family.
Yours sincerely ...
That is, once again, a classic and typical example of the heartless, uncaring attitude of the Child Support Agency, who will destroy an individual at any cost through their draconian use of the legislation they have at their convenience. I have to say that my office has made inquiries about this gentleman’s father, and he is dying of cancer. That is the system that we live with in this country and that is the system that my own government condones through its ministers. And that is only the start of it. I have other cases still coming to my office from within and outside my electorate. In many cases men are being driven into poverty because of this capacity-to-earn nonsense that says that, if you have earned a higher wage at some stage of your working career, you are expected to pay at that level regardless of the reasons for your earning a lower wage now.
I also have correspondence which illustrates that payers are supporting someone else’s child because their ex-partner cannot bear the cost of that child. As an example, a woman leaves her husband and has an affair with another individual. In the process of leaving the husband she takes the two children from that relationship and has another child with another individual, and, because she is struggling, the Child Support Agency asks the payer, who is not the biological father of the third child, to pay for the expense of child support because the ex ‘cannot cope with the cost’ that she says she is now enduring.
They are just two examples of the national shame, as I keep describing it, of the Child Support Agency. I just cannot believe that two ministers of the Crown and a parliamentary secretary are so far removed from this pain and suffering that is happening, with these people being forced into poverty, that they are doing nothing about it. I will continue to raise these issues in this House and I will continue to expose the uncaring attitude of these ministers and the parliamentary secretary.
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