Beng just as well you said you were a bloke or you also might have been called a man-hating feminist

--

yes but even man hating fems grow tired of abusing if no money involved and that was the genius of Howard/Ruddock, ie Cash for Comment. By 2005 we had all types of semi informed but mostly uninformed blokes ranting "they orta change the law", even the protest in Canberra, but arguing more amongst themselves.

As such they were doing nothing to help anybody but CFC idea was to get them firstly all pulling together [npi] and secondly all pulling for CSA/govt.

The AG site advertised that NOBODY would receive a grant over $75,000 pa unless "fully checked out", but that was simply code for ANY ratbag could get 75 gorillas, so they did, and I have no idea or interest if Kev 07 still keeps it going.

anyway they were herded into a website [with forum] which gave Politically Correct advice to deadbeats [as Howard called them] and hid behind names [called avatars or similar], with many being cars eg Monaro. So seems benz may be one such leftover from those times, otherwise he would not be wasting his time

Antiseptic: <"The rate of CSA cases being discharged due to death of the payer is, for the only year in which data was published, something like 2000 cases.
4. Many of those young men who suicide have been found with notes directly blaming the CSA">

1. Not all payers are male. (10-11% are female)
2. "Many" is non specific - 1, 2, 3 or 100, 200, 300?
3. "Death" occurs from a range of causes; suicide being just one.

From compilation of recorded facts:

# There were 2,191 deaths from suicide registered in Australia 2008; a rate of 10.2 per 100,000.

# Since at least the 1920s, more males than females die by suicide each year. In 2008, 1,710 males and 481 females died by suicide. Thus in 2008, 78% of people who died by suicide were males and 22% were females.

# Since 1999, the suicide rate in Australia has fallen by 22%, with the suicide rate for males falling by 25% and that for females by 12%.

http://www.responseability.org/site/index.cfm?display=134569

Pynchme:"because you can't give concrete figures their deaths are unimportant. carry on"

Right you are then...

Not exlusively males because 10% or so are females... which sounds kind of fairer than saying 90% of persecutions are males.

Benq... mission accomplished, you have stirred people up and been noticed. You dont need entrenched gender-biased policy written on paper for it to be so. The fact that mostly when the family separates the kids stay with their mother, which many people including myself have no issue with. By extension, most of the people the CSA hassles are in fact, male. Therefore, the CSA is targetting a 90% male population. If I walk into a room with 9 women and 1 man, I would describe a room with 10 people. If you ask me anything about the gender characteristics of the people in the room, I would perhaps erroneously describe a poor bloke in a room full of women...
No stake in it? Oh I dont believe that for one second my friend, but you might fool some people, yourself mostly I suspect.

I have 2 ex's, one goes through CSA and the other does not. The one that does not, gets some money from me. The one that does, gets the warm feeling of knowing they scrounge $20 out of my centrelink payments. I dont think she actually gets any of it, but I suspect it isnt about money at all. I hate the way the CSA has tried and tried to get my reasonable ex to join their program, she says she is sick of it too. We can talk and get along ok, I give her whatever she asks for, she does not ask for unreasonable things. We genuinely dont need their interference. I would really like to join the workforce again, but I think I will be too old in 10 more years or so. So I wont be paying back my HECS debt either.

Pat I think that it goes further than just the proportion of clients in different roles. I'm not privy to the internal working of CSA but at a guess staff training would include
- a gendered coverage of DV issues
- some tidied up material around their role in combating "deadbeat dads"
I suspect that you would also get a percentage of people who work there in part because they want to help women.
There is probably some hardening of attitudes towards men because of the reactions of men who see CSA as yet another nail in the coffin (a financial incentive for the ex to try to reduce access to children).

I don't try to get money from my ex, I think that we are all better off with financial ties broken. I get the freedom of her decisions not having any impact on me and the freedom of her never reacting to the feeling that she has paid for something I've bought. Our son never suffers the backwash of us arguing over money (arguments over money was a significant factor in our marriage hassles in the first place so why perpetuate it?).

Those who do want people to move on, those who want separated/divorced parents to have the best chance at cooperating at parenting even though apart have little credible option but to work towards the removal of any system which keeps parents tied together financially against their will.

I think that there is room for debate on what the alternatives are but there is little reason to support the current scheme and the damage it does.

R0bert

Perhaps we all need to be "gender-neutral" or whatever the current trendy incarnation of that is. They certainly come across as biased against fathers, the last one I spoke to sounded lesbian (gruff, called me mate, only wanted to read me the letter over the phone, very aggro and defensive... before you ask how I guessed).
They can be as completely gender neutral as gender neutral can be, with 10% female 90% male people to harrass...

My alternative, would be a suitably qualified social worker (no minority groups, 50-50 men and women) visits one parent then the other and explains what everybody wants and what might be a reasonable compromise. Then same person looks at finances and employment of both parents, maybe start putting a figure together to be discussed. The same social worker then assesses what level of contact and custody each has, and whether both parents are happy with it. Any other issues can be dealt with at this stage hopefully, and then the social worker kind of fades into the background and the parents be left to it. I think it would have higher initial costs but be cheaper in the longer term, it would be more effective when fathers take ownership of of it.
It wont be great, but much better I think.