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<\/p>\nA government agency deliberately broke the law for six years, the federal watchdog has found, with the issue sparked by legislative bungles still yet to be resolved.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Services Australia became aware that it was not fully complying with new child support laws in 2019, according to a scathing report released by the Commonwealth Ombudsman today, and the Department of Social Services was informed the following year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The government has a longstanding policy that parents who have 35 per cent or less custody of a child are not entitled to child support, however laws passed in 2008 and 2018 inadvertently meant that some parents in that category were technically eligible to receive payments.<\/p>\n
Despite being aware of the problematic implications of the new laws, which the social services department described as “unintended consequences”, legislation to rectify the issue is yet to be introduced to parliament.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Iain Anderson says it is not acceptable for public service agencies to pick and choose what parts of the law they apply.\u00a0 (ABC News: Monish Nand)<\/p>\n
“It’s not acceptable that public service agencies should just decide what parts of the law they should apply or not,” Ombudsman Iain Anderson told the ABC.<\/p>\n
“We’re now six years on and it still hasn’t been fixed.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Secretary of the Department of Social Services Michael Lye released a statement in November pledging to prioritise legislation to fix the “anomaly”.<\/p>\n
“The government\u2019s intention is to pass legislation with retrospective effect to ensure that no parent is unfairly disadvantaged by this anomaly,” it read.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A government spokesperson this week said the legislation was in the “final stages of drafting” and would be introduced when parliament next sits in February.<\/p>\n
But the ombudsman found both the department and Services Australia failed to take “proportionate or reasonable” steps to rectify the issue earlier and that multiple attempts to amend the legislation over the past six years “never meaningfully progressed”.<\/p>\n
According to the report, Services Australia opted against implementing the new laws due to concerns that doing so would lead to outcomes seen as “unfair and nonsensical” and go against the government policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Services Australia notified the ombudsman’s office of the issue in July, while Government Services Minister Katy Gallagher and Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek only received detailed briefings late last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The ombudsman found this was a failure of the duty for agencies to inform the relevant ministers “as soon as practicable” after a significant issue is identified.<\/p>\n
Mr Anderson compared the child support issue to the Robodebt scandal, noting that both involved situations of “public servants deciding they don’t need to comply with the law”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Now Robodebt is quite different in that it’s public servants deciding we don’t need to comply with the law even if it’s going to have a very negative impact on people,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Here the agencies were motivated by valid, proper and understandable concerns … but still, it’s not a public servant’s ability to choose whether you are going to comply with the law.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Robodebt was an automated system that used a faulty algorithm to incorrectly demand tens of thousands of welfare recipients pay debts they did not owe.<\/p>\n
Services Australia has identified at least 16,600 people affected by the discrepancy between the child support laws and the policy, and the debts involved could be from $60 to $10,000.<\/p>\n
“It’s an example of an agency thinking that the law is producing the wrong outcomes but not doing something to fix it,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“And when we’re talking about child support, it’s particularly important that wrong outcomes get corrected.”<\/p>\n
About 1.2 million separated parents have a support arrangement that sees one parent pay the other to assist with the costs of an estimated million children.<\/p>\n
Services Australia is responsible for about half of those arrangements through the child support program.<\/p>\n
The ombudsman issued six recommendations to the department and Services Australia, all of which have been accepted.<\/p>\n
“The Albanese government is committed to ensuring the child support scheme operates in the best interests of children,” a government spokesperson said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“It is a longstanding principle of the child support scheme that parents with less than 35 per cent care of a child should not be eligible for child support.”<\/p>\n