Mr SCHULTZ (6:52 PM) —At the outset in this address-in-reply I thank my constituents in the electorate of Hume for the honour they have once again bestowed upon me by giving me their unqualified support and, through their votes, re-electing me to the federal parliament. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the 450-plus booth workers, my campaign committee and the many branch members who worked tirelessly on polling day to assist me to obtain that goal.

I suppose it is an appropriate time to remind my parliamentary colleagues, many of whom would appreciate what I am saying, that it is the people who work on the polling booths who assist us to obtain the level of support that we get from our constituents by being there unselfishly working on our behalf on polling day as volunteers. I cannot speak too highly of the contribution those volunteers in the Hume electorate made to me increasing my majority on a two-party preferred basis from 57.4 per cent to 64.2 per cent. I know that much of that can be attributed to the hard work that members like me put in on a personal basis but, more importantly, I think it is indicative of the influence that those volunteer workers on the polling booths had on that particular vote.

I would also like to take the opportunity to acknowledge and put on the record the significant contribution that my wife made over the last 12 months. As members will be aware, on 17 November last year I had a very distressing accident with hydrochloric acid which resulted in the loss of the sight in my left eye. Over the period of time from 17 November until polling day, I had something like nine operations, which were designed to do various things. The point that I am getting to is that I could not drive my vehicle over the significant number of miles that I had driven over the last 16 years as a state and federal member of parliament. My wife unselfishly, with the commitment that we have from our partners and wives, undertook to ensure that I met every invitation I had from my constituency and gave up her own personal commitment to the people in the electorate that she has given tirelessly as an individual over many years.

At times we probably take our wives and our partners for granted. I certainly do not. I appreciate the magnificent contribution my wife has made. She has finally let me behind the wheel, after I did a five-lap circuit of the raceway at Goulburn to prove that I could still drive a vehicle despite the fact that my left eye no longer functions. So thank you to Gloria, my wife, and once again thank you to all those people who worked to re-elect me to this great place.

I did, however, undertake to rigorously pursue a number of issues that, to be quite frank with you, Mr Deputy Speaker, I have tried to comply with the system on over the last six years. I do get a little bit upset, as some of my parliamentary colleagues will understand, when I think that my constituents have been short-changed in terms of some of the funding that they believe they should get in what can only be described as the `fair go' environment that we as Australians are renowned for. In this three-year term I am going to be very vigorous in my approach, and I put a number of ministers on notice in that regard.

I am going to be ensuring that, in particular, I pursue the issue of the road funding for the outer eastern route Barton Highway bypass at Murrumbateman, which has been an issue for some three decades in the Yass Shire and which has been frustrated by a campaign by people who wanted the bypass to go along one particular route at the expense of the other, despite all the agencies who have undertaken investigations and put out study reports on the issue since June 1996. Since I came into this place a significant number of reports have come out. In fact, there were around seven of them up until October 2000 which said quite plainly that the eastern route bypass at Murrumbateman was the only way to go, for all sorts of reasons. Finally, the Minister for Transport and Regional Services and Deputy Prime Minister, the Hon. John Anderson—after receiving a rather terse letter from me leading up to the 2001 election—did make the announcement that the bypass route for the Barton Highway at Murrumbateman was the eastern route.

In the last 24 hours I have had occasion to talk to the new Minister for Local Government, Territories and Roads, who advised me—and this horrified me—that I would find it difficult to get road funding for that particular project because the road funding for that type of project had been committed for the next five years. I find that reprehensible and an absolute disgrace, given the amount of money that I saw go into some rural electorates that did not have the urgency that this bypass has. Each year that it has been neglected this bypass has been killing between two and four people and injuring between five and 12 people. I put the government on notice that I am going to pursue that, and I do not really care who I upset and how negative they might be about my contribution to that issue. I am doing it on behalf of people's lives and my constituency, and people can think what they like about it.

Another issue that I raised with the Attorney-General—and, thanks to his sensible approach to the issue, it still has not been resolved—relates to child abduction in Australia and the need for Australia to make that a criminal offence, because people are illegally taking children out of this country to countries like Malaysia that are not Hague Convention countries, and parents are unable to get their children back into this country. I think that is an absolute disgrace and I will be pursuing that issue and, if I have to, I will introduce a private member's bill if the bureaucrats in the department take it upon themselves to think that it is not a very important issue.

I now get to a particular issue that has been raised in this place and was the subject of a report last December. It is the issue of the Child Support Agency and what it is doing in this country—and more importantly what it is doing to males in this country. One of the biggest complaints about the Child Support Agency is that the non-custodial parent is considered by the Child Support Agency to have dependants that they are responsible for and which they must pay benefits for and yet Centrelink considers them to have no dependants and therefore considers them ineligible for any tax benefits or family assistance.

I recently had an email from a father in regional New South Wales whose former wife had an affair, left him, took the children to Melbourne and is now receiving $360 a fortnight in child support from her ex-husband. He sees the children once a month and occasionally gets them for a week during the school holidays. Incredibly, he is still required to pay child support to his former partner on the days he has the children. Why is the non-custodial parent who is paying child support not recognised by the tax office, Centrelink or any other department as a person with dependants? Why is this not taken into account?

I would now like to look at the issue of the custodial parent using children as a weapon. I will quote from another email that I received:

It is a disgusting and immoral situation when custodial parents use their children to extort even more money out of their former partner, who is already paying child support. Unfortunately this situation is all too common. People are threatened over and over that they will never see their kids again if they do not accede to the wishes of the custodial parent. The Child Support Agency is overwhelmingly on the side of the custodial parent, even when they are totally disregarding their custody arrangements, which have been court ordered. There is an indication of this is in the following email. It says:

The non-custodial parent has rights but they are constantly being ignored by the Child Support Agency whose only motive is to collect as much money as possible, at any cost. When a person ignores a court order over custody, they may get a slap on the wrist. If a person refuses to pay child support because the custodial parent is not obeying the court order, their personal bank accounts and/or tax returns may be accessed, in most instances in an environment where the 28-day appeal process is ignored by the Child Support Agency.

Let me now talk about the Child Support Agency accessing personal bank accounts. There are numerous cases that I have been told about where the CSA has accessed personal bank account records, sometimes even when they relate to a joint account with a new partner. After accessing these bank accounts, intercepting tax refunds and doing whatever they have to, the CSA is well known for neglecting its responsibilities. Earlier in the year I heard the story of two men in my electorate who had large amounts wrongly taken from them by the Child Support Agency and given to their ex-partners. I received another email about something similar that happened. This email is from the second wife of a man:

I repeat that: it is impossible to get it back!

So they wrongly took money from this man and, when it was acknowledged that a mistake was made, instead of returning the money they give him a credit on his account. The CSA seem to be a law unto themselves. They take anything they can get their hands on and never acknowledge any mistakes. I could go on all night, because I have hundreds of examples of this sort of treatment of males by the Child Support Agency.

Let me now talk a bit about anti-male bias. One of the biggest concerns that people have with the CSA is the bias against males that the agency seems to have, although I strongly acknowledge that many women are also victims of the CSA. There seems to be a very coherent anti-male bias. Males are constantly harassed by the CSA, often when there is absolutely nothing for them to pay. I will not quote from the emails because it will use up too much time and I will not have an opportunity to make the comments that I want to make. I have received emails from fathers and second wives. Incidentally, 51 per cent of the 400-plus emails that I received came from women supporting what I have just said in this acknowledgement of the problems that the CSA is causing. The CSA has just assumed that the male in the situation has to pay child support even though it was the children's mother in some cases who had taken off and not contacted her children.

There are countless incidents. My office received another call from a man in New South Wales who has custody of his child yet the CSA recently relieved him of $11,000 to be given to his wife in Darwin. I got another report today of the Child Support Agency illegally accessing a bank account, which I have asked the person to send me details of, and taking $15,000. He does not owe them money; he is living up to his obligations, yet they continue to drive this into men. Let me tell you what this does to males. It affects the male suicide rate, and I have had two of my constituents commit suicide because of it. One of the saddest things about the CSA chasing people for payments is the high rate of suicide in male payers of child support. What is even more disturbing is the poor way that the CSA handle this problem even when there is strong evidence that it is an issue.

A lady in my electorate of Hume rang my office a few months ago complaining that the CSA were harassing her with letters after her son had committed suicide earlier in the year. She rang the CSA to ask what the problem was and was then asked for several personal details such as her address and date of birth when she was not even a payer to the CSA. When she refused to give this personal information because she felt that the CSA had no right to this information, she was told that it would make the procedure to close her son's file more difficult. This was a woman still grieving over the loss of her son who had taken his own life a couple of months previously.

I could go on and on, but I will not. I am putting the new ministers and the Child Support Agency on notice that I am going to pursue this, despite the comments that have been made in the past and the thought from some of my parliamentary colleagues that it is not an issue out there. It is an issue out there and it is an issue that needs to be resolved. If the resolution of the issue means that we have to re-look at the legislation, remove the legislation or put in new legislation then we have to do that in the interest of fairness and equality in an act that was originally brought in by the Australian Labor Party to ensure that both the male and female partner, when a marriage or a relationship broke up, equally shared in the support of the child. That is not the case now. It has gone from child support to spousal enrichment and something has to occur to stop that unfair bias against males.

I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to speak here tonight. As I said, I am going to continue to push these issues for the next three years and I will vigorously pursue any minister of the Crown on this side of politics in this three-year term who thinks that it is too hard politically for him or too hard based on the advice he gets from the bureaucrats who have a vested interest to ensure that the 3,000 people—as an example—who work for the Child Support Agency remain in employment and, more importantly, remain in their anti-male biased state. (Time expired)

Debate (on motion by Mr Ripoll) adjourned.