Empowering Recipient Parents: Reforming the Child Support Scheme

Policy Title: Empowering Recipient Parents: Reforming the Child Support Scheme

Policy Focus Area: Family Law, Law Reform

Tier of Government: Federal

Policy Vision: To create a fair and equitable Child Support Scheme that empowers recipient parents, ensures the financial security of children, and safeguards against financial abuse.

Policy Objective:

1. To address the systemic issues within the Child Support Scheme that enable financial abuse and manipulation.
  1. To decouple child support from family tax benefits, ensuring that recipients are not penalized for receiving child support payments.
    
  2. To close loopholes that allow for the minimization or non-payment of child support.
    
  3. To compel payers to lodge tax returns and link non-compliance with child support payments to their credit ratings.
    
  4. To provide a child support guarantee paid by Services Australia to offer recipient parents certainty in cases where payers fail to make payments.
    

The Civil Voice Party acknowledges the distressing impact of financial abuse perpetrated through the Child Support Scheme, as highlighted in the Family Law Forum and subsequent report. We are committed to enacting legislative reforms that prioritize the well-being and financial security of recipient parents and their children. By implementing these policy objectives, we aim to create a more just and supportive system that upholds the rights and dignity of all individuals involved in child support arrangements.

Thanks Cameron,

I don’t have a lot of expertise in this area but in general this makes sense to me.

For the point around loopholes, are these enumerated somewhere such as by the Family Law Forum and their report. If so can we add language here - “as specified/indicated by …” - that references that so we don’t have to spell them out ourselves?

I was discussing this with my husband and his suggestion was around your final point - that child support payments are guaranteed by the government AND if the payer fails to make a payment, it becomes a HECS-like indexed debt for them.

Thoughts?

I think that is interesting idea to add :slightly_smiling_face:

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