Mr ENTSCH (10:30 AM) —First of all I would like to thank the opposition for cooperating and agreeing to allow me to continue in the debate on the Child Support Legislation Amendment Bill 1998 . I do apologise: I was interrupted yesterday by a division in the House of Representatives, and I was tied up with delivering a report in the main chamber as the chair of the Joint Statutory Committee on Native Title and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Land Fund.

I have one comment on the suggestion of the honourable member for Calare (Mr Andren) for bipartisan support. I certainly agree that I can see some merit there but I suppose that with some cynicism I have to say that the Price report, from where a lot of these recommendations have come, is not something that has suddenly appeared. It had been around for a long time before we came into government and, prior to our coming into government, much of that report had actually been either left on the table or rejected or not accepted by the previous government.

I am not suggesting that members on the other side now have not got commitment; I am sure they have and I would certainly appreciate their bipartisan support in dealing with this very emotional and difficult problem. But we need, as a government, to go through and identify areas that we feel that we can address immediately. With support from members of the other side and from the Independents, I am confident that we can eventually find a solution. We certainly have the will to do that.

Going on from yesterday, the government must address ongoing reforms in the following areas. The formula is one of the problems that most of my constituents agree about: some type of formula is needed to arrive at a reasonable amount payable for child support. However, we all believe more flexibility must be introduced into the assessment process by having a formula that not only will enable paying parents to meet their liability but will also firmly establish the role they are playing in the upbringing of their children.

The formula as it now stands is based on a certain percentage of the paying parent's gross or taxable income. This percentage varies, depending on the number of children. Whether the paying parent has one, two or three jobs makes absolutely no difference: they still pay the same percentage of that income. Flexibility must be introduced to allow child support to be calculated on the net income of the principal job only.

Capping is another area, and fixing child support at particular rates is another measure that many payers support. The capped rate would be expected to accurately reflect the genuine cost of maintaining a child or children from the age of one through to 18. Accountability is another problem: a mechanism must be established to ensure that child support payments are actually used for the children and not for maintaining the custodial parent's lifestyle. We must never forget that this scheme is all about child support.

Another area is taxation: I feel that rebates on child support payments should be made available to the paying parents. These people pay a high rate of tax, a single rate, while custodial parents are able to claim dependant rebates. There are a lot of other hidden costs, of course, and a mechanism must be established to identify the value of extra expenses that the non-custodial parent incurs in having to provide a suitable home for access visits. Relief could be provided by way of tax relief for mortgage payments or rent. Many parents also incur considerable expense in the provision of air fares for access visits and in the provision of clothing and personal items. These must be identified as legitimate expenses by child support agencies, and relief granted for the paying parent.

One of the other problems we have is in regard to self-employed payers. The collection of payments from self-employed payers is a matter of increasing concern in the child support area. One particularly sad case brought to the attention of my office involved a lady who is self-employed and whose ex-husband manipulated his real income and seriously distorted his capacity to earn a proper income, in order to avoid paying his fair share towards the upbringing of his three children. This resulted in her having to repay almost the total amount of child support he had paid to her over a five-year period.

The woman's mother had to sell her own home and purchase a larger house to accommodate her daughter and the three children. If it had not been for that mother, the woman and her children would have been literally living on the streets, whilst her ex-husband received cash in hand from two companies: he was a silent partner in another company while all the time operating a company of his own and paying almost nothing to his family.

I am pleased that we have the child support scheme in place in this country. I sincerely believe that we need it. However, what is of enormous concern to me and many of my constituents is the apparent inconsistencies and inequities in the current system and these must be addressed as a matter of urgency. We need a better scheme, a scheme which focuses on the best interests of the child.

Reform of the child support scheme must also include family law and the Family Court. A mechanism must be established to separate family law from child support matters. It must provide fairer access to legal aid; it must address the issue of abuse of access agreements; and it must also address the abuse of domestic violence orders which are being used by lawyers as an interim measure to strengthen the negotiating position of custodial parents. However I will deal with these issues in another place and at another time. I commend this bill to the House.