JJ CaMeKa - Child Support

Child support (or child maintance) is best agreed upon by both parents.

In a Utopian world, this would work fine. Unfortuneately we do not live in a Utopian
world but a world often ruled by greed and revenge.

In Australia, the Child Support Agency (CSA) is the Australian government agency
responsible for administering the child support assessment act and the
child support registrations and collections act.

The legislation is NOT fair towards the payer, in that the formula that is used to
calculate child support is flawed. An attempt to remedy this will come into place
in July 2008 - 3 years AFTER it was established that the formula was NOT fair. An
unfair formula that has been in existance for nearly 20 years.

There are other points within the legislation that are unfair and unjust, which I
have been lobbying government ministers to change - all of which are human
rights violations.

I strongly suggest that in ALL your dealings with the CSA, that it be only in writing
where possible (99.9% of the time). I have had my phone conversations twisted
and recorded incorrectly, or not at all when it was an extremely important and
relevant matter. If you MUST phone, follow the conversation up in writing.

Email is my prefered method as you can set your email program to request a read
receipt and you have a record of when you sent your message if you save it -
sometimes automatically done by the email program.

Never accept a phone call from someone claiming to be from the CSA. As they can
not prove their identity, it may not be a case officer from the CSA - this has
happened to me once before I believe. Unless the person that contacted me
actually was from the CSA, then they were very rude and pushy.

Whether you are a payer or payee, I strongly recommend you keep a diary and
record the daily happens with your kids. This is something to fall back on if the CSA
demand proof of contact as would any government department dealing with these
laws.

NEVER rely on the CSA 'Guide' - it was written by a biased CSA legal section and
does incorrectly advise on legislation interpretation. For your own information,
links to the relevant legislation is offered at the start of this page.

While the CSA is not responsible for the current unfair child support laws, it still
has to enforce them without bias. Unfortuneately, there are those within the CSA
that I have spoken with that further introduce their own personal bias in their over
zealous attempt to do their job "in the best interest of the child".

CSA personel MUST follow the Australian Public Service code of conduct in
applying the current laws without bias.

The first being in family law and in relation to child support:
Defacto (civil union marriage) partners are not recognised as a dependant of the
payer while a partner to a registered marriage is recognised. This is recognised in
social security legislation but NOT in family law. This is a breach of Article 2, 7, 16
and 28 of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR).

The second being within the Child support assessement Act. Those on government
social welfare payments, are expected to support their children from their welfare
payment. This is not expected in an intact family, hence the additional family
payments. In doing so a reasonable level of support is NOT being given those most
in need of support. This breaches Article 2, 7 and 22 of the UNDHR.

The third point being that if a child is in receipt of social welfare payments. These
are not considered, even if the payer is also in receipt of social welfare payments.
This leads to child support being paid to the payee by the payer who maybe on
similar of lower welfare payments than the child. This is again discriminatory and
in breach of Article 1, 7 and 22 of the UNDHR.

A forth point is in both child support and family law and originally drawn from the
1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child where the child's rights were
paramount - above and beyond a parents rights according to the UNDHR. This was
remedied in 1989 in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. For some reason,
Australian Family law is nearly 20 years behind in making amendments to the
relevant Family laws in making the child's rights equal to the parent's rights.
Another human rights breach - Article 1 and 2 - the big ones.

There are a number of avenues that are available that may be able to help resolve
your problems with the CSA without or before resorting to court.

1. Object to their decision and have it reviewed.
2. Contact the Social Security Appeals Tribunal to have the decision reviewed.
3. Contract the Commonwealth Ombudsman.
4. If all the above fail, then you probably do not have cause for court action.

I have in my possession (which I will scan and put on this site) a letter from the
CSA legal section that in essence states:

"... because Australia is a sovereign State, we do not have to abide by the Human
Rights declarations of the United Nations, even if Australia is a signatory."

It's nice to know that the CSA legal section supports human rights abuses.