Services Australia says it is cracking down on financial abuse. But the parents it chases hardest are often those who are most compliant and vulnerable – while for those who use the system to continue their abuse, it’s business as usual.
It’s been ten years since I separated from my ex-husband, but I didn’t claim child support until last year, after our informal agreement broke down. It should be easy for me; as the founder of Women’s Divorce Academy, I coach women through this process every week.
But it’s been a year of assessments, repeated objections from my ex, participating in a dozen phone interviews, and endless callbacks that leave me on Services Australia’s hold music for up to an hour at a time.
The moment I realised how flawed this system really is was when my caseworker interrupted one of my answers: “Don’t mention the word ‘abuse’,” she warned, “because then it gets a lot more complicated.” (For the record, I had no intention of mentioning abuse and I’m not alleging any abuse here.)
Communicating with my ex is challenging, so all I wanted was someone making decisions for us. After one of his objections, my caseworker asked me to consider accepting his claim that I earn more than I do, telling me: “You’ll only lose $6000 a year.” I’m not sure if there are single mothers out there who think $6000 is nothing, but I know I’m not one of them.
The process continues without any clear resolution, and is likely to do so for the best part of another year. I cannot predict which way it will go.
Crystal Paduch spent twelve years working inside Services Australia before her disillusionment led her to start her business Child Support Consultants. She now assists parents in their interactions with Services Australia and the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART), which oversees the latter part of the appeals process.
Crystal’s client Sarah* left her marriage in 2012 with her two children. Despite her ex telling her he would “ruin” her, she registered with Services Australia in 2013, and she says her ex has been abusing the system ever since.
“There has never been a time he hasn’t had an objection open,” says Sarah. “Over his income, his spending and the nights the children stayed with him, backed by tax returns from his accountant wife and false claims by his friends”.
A kindergarten teacher, Sarah spent her weekends gathering evidence for each new officer, who treated each objection as an isolated case (as is Services Australia’s policy), not the pattern it was. Each time she won, he escalated to the ART.
Every objection cost Sarah time, confidence and emotional energy, as the abuse she had endured during her marriage continued via Services Australia’s processes. Then, after her youngest turned 18 this year, Sara’s ex claimed the children had lived exclusively with him for the past three years.
Sarah produced statutory declarations, Life360 tracking data and daily photos of her children at home. Her ex, by now living interstate, produced false statements from friends and family and some security camera footage of their children visiting his home. The ART found in Sarah’s favour; but a second appeal overturned it.
That decision means Sarah – whose children live with her full-time – owes her ex about $20,000. Unable to fund a legal appeal, she agreed to a payment plan. When Services Australia discovered $17,000 in her savings account, they told her she had to pay one lump sum immediately.
“She shouldn’t have a debt at all – that’s the whole point,” Crystal explains. “It’s all based on the father lying, his support network giving false statements about the care arrangements. And he won. She feels like she’s being treated like a criminal.”
As Crystal adds on what she’s seen on the system in general: “Abusive people use the system against the other parent,” she says. “A government agency should be identifying that and stopping it, but the way the system works now, they’re inadvertently enabling it.”
Mum of one Marina* went to Services Australia in 2019, when her son was five. Her ex – a doctor who, she says, presents himself as unemployed – has built a structure the agency cannot reach: multiple bank accounts and companies, and suspected aliases.
He owes Marina over $95,000, but Services Australia has concluded it can’t help.
“Services Australia is supporting the parent who isn’t paying – not my child,” Marina says. Her son has had to change schools to one she worries is not good for him.
“I always ask myself: is there any justice in this system for kids?” she says.
The disparity in Sarah’s and Marina’s cases exposes the core problem they are up against: KPIs. Services Australia staff have key performance indicators they are measured against: how much they recover, how many payment arrangements they secure.
“The way this system works can reduce you to a statistic, and that needs attention,” Crystal says. Pursuing an evader like Marina’s ex is slow and often futile. A compliant mother like Sarah is a quick win.
“They found someone easier. It can feel like bullying,” she says. “You’ve got this nice teacher who doesn’t know she can move money between accounts and hide it like Marina’s ex clearly has. They saw $17,000 and thought, ‘beauty.'”
Services Australia General Manager Hank Jongen says child support is meant to help children “without exposing either parent to harm,” and acknowledges it “can be misused in the context of family and domestic violence, including financial abuse.”
He points to a new Preventing Financial Abuse through Child Support strategy and a year of changes – tighter income-estimate checks, a review of the change-of-assessment process – plus Budget reforms promising more wage-based collection.
Crystal says that, while the reforms mean well, they can also miss the point.
“The real problems – money hidden in trusts, companies, partners’ accounts, overseas – they haven’t fixed. So they’re using heavy-handed tactics and picking the low-hanging fruit like Sarah, because people like Marina’s ex are ‘too hard’.”
While some changes have made it harder for non-paying parents to evade their responsibilities, parents like Sarah and Marina live in the gap between intention and reality – one losing her savings to a system that’s supposed to protect her, and the other unlikely to see a cent to help care for her child.
Until the agency measures success by who it protects, not just how much they collect, the people being punished will remain those least able to protect themselves.
*Names have been changed to protect privacy.