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Member for Hume Alby Schultz today announced the release of an information booklet “The Battle for Balance” he has compiled ON THE Child Support Agency so that the community is informed on how decisions made by the Child Support Agency are impacting on the ability of non-custodial parents financially, socially and emotionally.
“Over the past 3 years I have compiled a significant data base comprising of in excess of 6000 case studies from all over Australia. These case studies prove that the Child Support Agency has unfairly targeted non-custodial parents with its draconian, intrusive and abusive powers,” Mr Schultz said today.
“When the Child Support legislation was first introduced in the 1980’s its intent was to target irresponsible fathers who failed to meet their obligations and responsibility to their children after separation or a marriage break up.
“The Act was also prefaced quite rightly on the parents of a child being equally responsible for the care and upkeep of the child,” he added.
“Since then unfortunately because of the lack of accountability of the CSA to disinterested Ministers of the Crown, it has been allowed to develop into a biased, intrusive, abusive, bureaucratic monolith which has been given free reign to make decisions which have serious social, mental and financial implications to child support non-custodial parents who invariably are predominantly male”.
“The non-custodial parent is subjected as an example to a process whereby child support payments are calculated on his/her “capacity to earn”. In effect it means that if the Child Support Agency deems that a non-custodial parent is able to earn more than he/she is actually earning then payments are made on that capacity to earn figure,” he said.
“Not even the taxation department has the power to tax or penalise an individual on the basis of a hypothetical earning capacity. Imagine the outcry from the community if they were subjected to that type of questionable and I believe unconstitutional abuse of power”.
“The information booklet seeks to expose the truth about the CSA and its activities which in most instances are conveniently hidden from the community. I believe that the introduction of legislation to implement recommendations from the Parkinson report will go some way to putting a level of fairness into the Child Support system. However there is considerable work yet to be done and the booklet “The Battle for Balance” is just the beginning of a process to expose how the CSA operates,” Mr Schultz concluded.
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