Antiseptic, your logic is good, but, what next.

By your own admission, we are paying less taxes, yet we are also placing more burdon on those deminishing taxes.

we are unique
I support many kids and have done for years. From sponsoring entire football clubs, to providing free meals at schools and yes, I have two (now adults) children.

Quaranteening of known offenders wages is a good place to start. As always, the few who wish to cheat the system cause havic for all others.

I have mates who have been screwed by child support.

There are two bottom lines to this issue in my opinion. The name of this organisation is deceptive, as they have no dialogue with any children and in most cases they dont provide any resources of any nature to anybody. The other thing, has anybody ever had an objective look at it all and asked the question of if the plusses outweigh the minusses?

Basically, the CSA has been established for cases where parents cannot get together and organise it for themselves. Rather than try to help them come to some agreement, they will try to cause even more friction in order to stay in the picture. This is especially evident if a man has more than one ex, but only one ex using the CSA to torment him.

rehctub:"we are paying less taxes, yet we are also placing more burdon on those deminishing taxes."

Which is why I suggested the additional 0.5% special-purpose levy which you rejected as unaffordable. My point,of course, is that it IS affordable and moreover it is necessary. As long as the State takes sides in simple family squabbles over money there will be escalation of the problems and the cost to the community is very high.

Let's start from the proposition that the best interests of the children are the goal and that for the vast majority of children both of their parents are OK. As it stands now, the legislation starts from the propsition that for most children fathers are optional extras whose principal role is to provide cash to Mum, while Mum is assumed to be a paragon beyond reproach. It's very careful to avoid mentioning Mum or Dad specifically, as it is required to do, but the intent is made clear by context. Further, by it's discriminatory application of the legislation, the CSA makes it clear that they interpret it that way.

This model is fatally flawed, based as it is on a worst case, rather than standard case. When I make a business decision, I have to look at both the best and worst cases, but I plan for the likeliest outcome, while taking precautions to protect myself against the worst and hoping that the best will occur.

The CSA assumes that all fathers are "deadbeats" since that is the justiication for its existence, but tries to take credit for the vast majority of fathers who are not, never acknowledging that its very existence makes the prevalence of "deadbeats" higher and never, ever examining the impact on children of its claimed actions "in their best interests".

A small levy would be a tiny price to pay for the end of the CSA.

PattheBogan:"The other thing, has anybody ever had an objective look at it all and asked the question of if the plusses outweigh the minusses?"

Not really, unfortunately. The legislation arose out of International Treaty obligations, specifically the International Convention on the Rights of the Child" and is based on the idea that kids should come before their parents in terms of financial support, which is not unreasonable. It also assumed that mothers were the best people to care for children, on the basis that the traditional family in Australia consisted of father as breadwinner, mother as homemaker, so it tried to perpeuate that situation following divorce. On top of all that, it pandered to the very well-organised Feminist and single-mother lobbies, who were very strongly influential in the election of the Hawke government and in the politics of radicalism.

There was also a strong awareness that the cost of supporting single mothers who chose not to work was becoming unaffordable and so it was designed to claw back some of those costs from the fathers, who are not and never have been organised as a group and who certainly don't receive Government funding to do so. We were a soft target compared to the well-funded women's groups, too busy working to sit around whingeing to each other.

That traditional family arrangement has changed significantly, which the Howard reforms to the Family Law Act made clear, but at the same time the CS legislation has become more draconian and the Agency has grown like topsy, expanding over 30% under Howard and with its budget increased by several hundred million.

All for nothing. It's a failed experiment.

I guess that there are a large number of fathers who cut back on working overtime, because child support and taxes make it unviable. If we dropped the CSA or reduced the rates, I daresay that increases in income and company tax would go a long way.

Benk, not only are there a lot of fathers failing to do o/t,etc, there are a great number on the dole. Among CSA-collect cases, which make up about 50% of all CS cases,the median taxable income of paying parents is just $20,392, while in the case of private collect cases, the median income was $36,504, some 80% higher.

If we look at the receiving parents, both private collect and CSA collect cases had a very similar level of taxable income, but private collect cases had a much higher median "child support income" - some 35% higher than CSA collect cases, suggesting that these parents were supplementing their Centrelink benefits with some work.

Still, the CSA's figures make clear that most of these recipients are also on benefits, with a median taxable income of just $26,967.

The figures come from http://www.csa.gov.au/publications/pdf/FactsAndFigures2009.pdf

The cost to the community of maintaining this poverty trap is huge.

It also looks like the CSA (or more accurately, their DHS bosses) is expecting a substantially increased workload in their Compensation Waiver, Ministerial Correspondence and Ombudsman's/ANAO Teams

http://jobs.humanservices.gov.au/sap%28bD1lbiZjPTkwMCZkPW1pbg==%29/bc/bsp/sap/hrrcf_pinstappl/application.do?sap-client=900&sap-language=EN&PARAM=UElOU1RfR1VJRD1ERkEwM0VFMTUwN0IyRkYxOEFGMzAwMjI2NEZDMzk1RQ%3d%3d

"FUNCTION:
The Strategic Stakeholder Unit (SSU) is primarily responsible for the management of highly escalated and complex complaints
that have been raised through external stakeholders including the Minister for Human Services, Members of Parliament, and the
Commonwealth Ombudsman. In addition, the SSU oversees the resolution of special financial claims made under the
Compensation for Defective Administration Scheme (CDDA) under the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997."

Apart from highlighting the fact that CSA is no longer trusted to do its own receuitment, as per the Ombudsman's recommendation, it shows that the CSA has recognised the significant workload coming their way in the near future. It is the fact that the SCOs in charge of extorting fathers were simply not interested in their obligations under either the PSA or under the Financial Management and Accountability Act and that has left the CSA very exposed indeed.