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Alby Schultz 14th Aug 2006 – Radio Interview – Dads on the Air
Host: Alby Schultz is the only politician in Federal Parliament who has had the guts and the integrity to regularly speak up about the Child Support Agency and the catastrophic effects that it’s having on many peoples’ lives, both personally and on a broader social level. Now Alby, you’re putting out a new leaflet called ‘Child Support in Australia – A Heartfelt War’ for relationships, sorry I can’t read my own handwriting here, can you just tell us a bit about what the booklet’s about and its full title?
Alby Schultz: Yes, the booklet is headed ‘Child Support in Australia – A Heartfelt War of Relationships, Families and Money, the Battle for Balance, and it’s been compiled from the extensive database that I’ve collected over the last two years. In particular, which contains thousands and thousands of case examples of how the Child Support Agency, and indeed to a lesser degree, the Family Court, has created massive problems of a financial, social, and emotional type to different family groups.
These submissions were verified through personal contact and supporting documentation. A couple of law graduates from Edith Cohen University requested me to have access to my database, which I gave them. Out of that database, I allowed them a thousand submissions, and these submissions have been verified through these people with personal contact of supporting documentation. Therefore, they were correct accounts. And of the verified submissions, 557 of those thousand submissions were de-identified in order to protect the anonymity of the participants.
Host: And what, in general, is that research showing? We get a lot of devastated people showing up on our site and indeed coming on the show talking about the consequences, but what does this research show?
Alby Schultz: Well, the thematic content analysis identified two principle themes; those being of the Family Court and the Child Support Scheme.
In terms of the Family Court, participants reported anger and resentment associated with the costs and the ability of residential parents to exploit the system for financial gain, and it was also suggested that the legal system was unable to enforce orders relating to access.
In relation to the Child Support Scheme, two sub-themes emerged. These sub-themes were administrative fairness and fairness in terms of policy and legislation. The participant narratives described the system that was weighted heavily in favor of the residential parent, but of course, the consequences for non-residential parents were described as financial, psychological, or physical, and the negative financial impact on second families was described as significant, rendering it impossible for non-resident parents to form functional re-partners relationship. They had been completely financially stripped and emotionally devastated.
The negative impact on the psychological well-being was a cause for concern with about 31.7% of the sample; reporting depression, anxiety, or reduced motivation, and there’s 9% of the sample who successfully suicided. The effect of perceived fairness in relation to the Child Support Scheme and the Family Court requires further consideration. From work that has been done, it looks like about 6.1% of all child support cases terminate due to the death of a party. That comes out at about 12 deaths a day, now not all of those are suicides, but there is a huge body of thought that would suggest that the CSA is very closely related to the high death rates among separated men.
Host: Is that something that you found confirmed in your research?
Alby Schultz: Absolutely, that was very much highlighted in the, I think I’ve got somewhere in the vicinity of five and a half thousand submissions from all over Australia, and as I said, of the thousand cases that I gave the Edith Cohen University lecturers, there were, if I could give you an idea of what was found in those thousand submissions, there was:
- 21% of them were centred around abuse of power, that is abuse of power by the Child Support Agency
- 19% of unfair assessments
- 15.8% problems related between payers and payees.
- Extreme hardship due to Child Support Agency with 15.2%
- Formula complaints comprised of 12.7% of the parcel
- The Family Court and Family Law issues 7.7%
- Unsatisfactory staff 2.8%.
- Paternity issues which is escalating at the moment was then at 1.9%
- Death due to the Child Support Agency was 1.5%.
- Suicides and attempted suicides is 1.3%
- And the Child Support Agency having access to bank account and tax returns was 1%.
Alby Schultz: So there’s a pretty significant cross-section of all of those problems which are affecting people and creating massive social problems.
Host: I guess what really puzzles a lot of people is why does the government persist with a scheme which is so widely hated. I mean, the British have just abolished their child support scheme. The fiasco one of the ironies was that we sent personnel over to advise them on their child support agencies, as they regarded ours as a success.
Alby Schultz: Well, you’ve got to keep remembering that this scheme was introduced in the mid-1980s, and since then, the Child Support Agency has been allowed to, by successive government Ministers, to practice “unheard of powerful procedures” which is creating enormous problems for people.
Host: Now it’s correct, isn’t it, for people that don’t understand this, that a child support review officer can estimate your income or deem your income to be basically anything they like?
Alby Schultz: Yes, and I’ve actually received some pretty good information on what they call this “capacity to earn”. It’s not to my knowledge; contained in any of the legislation that drives the Australian Tax Office as an example – so they’re an element on their own who have an intrusive bias system which ignores all sense of fairness, decency, and partiality when it deliberates against the payer, and to the extent that the child has become secondary to its agenda. It is quite obviously to attack, discredit, and punish the payer for what can only be described extensive use of powers that have impinged on the privacy and the rights of individuals that no other department, including the Australian Taxation Office, has ever done in the history of this country.
Host: And there is an enormous human sadness behind this, isn’t there?
Alby Schultz: Yes, that’s right, and that lives are absolutely and completely wrecked by an out-of-control agency.
Host: Yes, and I think in answer to your question before, that the governments of the day have seen it as a highly emotional issue and tend to move away from addressing it and simple fear of the women’s vote, or is it…
Alby Schultz: Well, a political part of it has got something to do with it, but I mean that’s not an issue because fair-minded Australians, including women, are very much part of the significant number of submissions that I’ve had. I’ve had submissions from former wives who say the system is unfair, I’ve had detailed submissions from people who have been kept in ignorance of what’s been happening to the father of the child by the Child Support Agency. I’ve had sisters, daughters, women, mothers, and grandmothers who are picking up the emotional and the financial side of the problems associated with it. That’s why I’m angry about this broad-based announcement by Minister Hockey that payers owe payees $900 million. I’ve asked him to prove that to me because my figures don’t show that. If you look into what information I have, you find that much of the debt that’s owed or allegedly owed by these payers, some of them I might add, a small percentage of them, are people who deserve to be scrutinized and punished, but the majority of them who owe money are owed money on the basis of this nonsensical thing of “capacity to earn”.
As an example, if Alby Schultz was earning $70,000 in a job and because of the pressures after a marriage break up, was so stressed out that he decided, and I say he in the context of the majority of payers are men, some are women – but the majority are men – he then can’t cope and gives his job away and goes into another job that hasn’t got the pressures on him at a lesser rate of pay per annum, as an example down to $50,000 a year, but because he was earning $70,000 he’s taxed and penalized under child support on the basis of what they call capacity to earn, which was the original $70,000. That then builds up a debt because financially he can’t keep up with the amount of money he is required to pay under his old wage. He’s then, his debt – then its compounded by a 15% interest on for every month that he doesn’t pay, so the debt keeps escalating to the point where he will never be able to pay it back and can’t pay it back.
Host: We’re talking with Alby Schultz; he’s the member for Hume, and one of the few politicians in Federal Parliament who has had the guts and the integrity to speak up on the Child Support Agency’s operations. We’ll be back in a moment.
Host: Now we’re talking with Alby Schultz, he’s a member for Hume and one of the few politicians in Australia who has had the guts and the integrity to speak up about the personal social catastrophe of the Child Support Agency, welcome back Alby.
Alby Schultz: My pleasure, John.
Host: Now just before we get stuck into things, I thought we should mention that your vote at the last election went up 5%, so for all those politicians in Australia that think they’re going to alienate the women’s vote by daring to speak up on these issues, your vote went up.
Alby Schultz: That’s absolutely right.
Host: You must be a very safe sitting member by now.
Alby Schultz: Yes, I am, and I think my experiences and the way in which I’ve tried to address the problem shows that what I said in your program earlier and that is that most Australians are fair-minded and when the true modus operandi of the Child Support Agency is exposed publicly, people start thinking about it and understand it’s unfair and it’s unreasonable.
Host: Because of course surveys always show that the public supports the notion of parents supporting their children. We all do – So what is it, a classic case of good intentions gone wrong?
Alby Schultz: Yes, I think what’s happened is it’s been driven by gender bias within the Child Support Agency because I can be corrected when I make this statement, but about 66% of all employees in the Child Support Agency are single females and of the remainder, they’re single males, so you have a situation where you’ve got single people making judgments, and in many cases, gender bias judgments against payers in an environment where they have absolutely no knowledge of marriage and how marriages operate and how marriages can go through difficult times and what causes it.
Host: Can you give some case examples that you’ve collected of the sort of material that will be available in this booklet?
Alby Schultz: Yes, sure. Look, I’ll give you a case example of two and possibly a third one, because the third one’s a little bit lengthy, but it’s a very heartbreaking case. But this case – the person and I’m not going to repeat the person’s name because I’m keeping their anonymity to protect them.
“I was divorced in 1992, three children from marriage, a daughter from a previous marriage. January 2005 CSA took $3200 from my bank account without notice. By September 2005, my children were all adults and employed, and I still had a debt of almost $25,000 with the Child Support Agency. I contacted Alby Schultz out of sheer desperation for advice. Then armed with good advice, I then negotiated with my ex-wife to waive my CSA debt to her as I was 61 years old and would never be able to pay the debt. CSA accepted the letter from my ex-wife.”
Host: He could have whistled Dixie until the next millennium if the wife didn’t see reason.
Alby Schultz: Yes, that’s absolutely right. Another one here is centered around a paternity issue.
“On Wednesday 8th of February 2006, I received a letter from the CSA that had the most devastating effect on my family. I felt it necessary to write to you and tell my story in the hope that you will be able to help. The letter told me that my ex-wife, who I have been separated from for 17 years, was claiming child support for her 16-year-old daughter. I called the CSA and spoke to a case officer. I told her that I did not believe that I was the father because I was not on the birth certificate. I have been told repeatedly by my ex-wife that I was not the father and because of the timing of the girl’s birth, I believed it to be true. I explained to the case officer that I had a court document giving me sole custody of the child of the marriage, a boy born 22^nd September 1987. These documents were dated 1994, which was some four years after the birth of the girl. The case officer told me that it didn’t matter that I had raised my son without any input from his mother. She also said that the only criteria that had to be met from my ex-wife to claim child support was that the girl was born in 1990 while my ex and I were still legally married. We divorced in 1994. And because my ex had applied for child support and met that criteria, they would process the application. The case officer, however, did seem a little surprised that it had taken my ex-wife 16 years before making the claim. The case officer told me that they would be doing the assessment on $110,000 despite my tax return showing a taxable income of $66,000 as all my legal deductions and losses on some investment property was added on to the taxable income. This meant my CSA annual amount would be $17,263. I pleaded with the case officer to give some time to seek legal advice and to see my accountant, to which she granted me an extra two days. When it has taken 16 years for a claim to be made – why the rush? Knowing that I didn’t have the income to pay $17,263 per year, I started to look at what my alternatives were. Do I get a second job on the weekends? I already work 60-65 hour week and I would need to earn an extra $49,324 per year, 47% tax and 18% child support to cover the cost of child support. Or do I take my own life to ensure that my beloved family is cared for by my insurance policies? I fail to understand how my ex-wife could claim child support after 16 years, regardless of whether I’m the girl’s biological father or not. I would never have walked away from that child if I had believed her to be my daughter, and now that my ex-wife has -what-changed her mind, I am expected to be a financial parent
Please fix the paragraph spacing in the following text: who I have been separated from for 17 years, was claiming child support for her 16 year old daughter. I called the CSA and spoke
to a case officer. I told her that I did not believe that I was the father because I was not on the birth certificate. I have been told
repeatedly by my ex-wife that I was not the father and because of the timing of the girl’s birth I believed it to be true. I explained
to the case officer that I had a court document giving me sole custody of the child of the marriage, a boy born 22^nd September
- These documents were dated 1994 which was some four years after the birth of the girl. The case officer told me that it
didn’t matter that I had raised my son without any input from his mother. She also said that the only criteria that had to be met
from my ex-wife to claim child support was that the girl was born in 1990 while my ex and I were still legally married.
We divorced in 1994. And because my ex had applied for child support and met that criteria, they would process the application.
The case officer however did seem a little surprised that it had taken my ex-wife 16 years before making the claim. The case officer
told me that they would be doing the assessment on $110,000 despite my tax return showing a taxable income of $66,000 as all my
legal deductions and losses on some investment property was added on to the taxable income. This meant my CSA annual amount
would be $17,263. I pleaded with the case officer to give some time to seek legal advice and to see my accountant to which she
granted me an extra two days. When it has taken 16 years for a claim to be made – why the rush? Knowing that I didn’t have the
income to pay $17,263 per year, I started to look at what my alternatives were. Do I get a second job on the weekends? I already
work 60-65 hour week and I would need to earn an extra $49,324 per year, 47% tax and 18% child support to cover the cost of child
support. Or do I take my own life to ensure that my beloved family is cared for by my insurance policies? I fail to understand how
my ex-wife could claim child support after 16 years, regardless of whether I’m the girl’s biological father or not. I would never
have walked away from that child if I had believed her to be my daughter and now that my ex-wife has -what-changed her mind,
I am expected to be a financial parent. As there seems to be no mediation process and my circumstances are not taken in to
consideration before an assessment is made by the CSA, I am pleading with you Alby to consider the circumstances outlined in
this letter and try to get some help for me”.
Alby Schultz: And the postscript on that said this client has taken his case to the courts. CSA did start to collect. Then the ex-wife
then suddenly withdrew her CSA application. Court costs to the client were $6,000. So I mean there’s a classic example of how
administratively and professionally the Child Support Agency is absolutely disgraceful.
Host : Alby there are hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of similar stories, many of them with sadder endings than that one.
We just want to ask, we’re running out of time, we want to ask, the recent crack down…130 something million dollars.
OK I’d like your comment on Hockey’s statement that he wishes the CSA to actively chasing them to the grave and then his
subsequent proposal to spend $136M of taxpayers money to pay for a jack booted mob to hang fathers to the grave. Do you also
believe, with such statements by Hockey, that in accordance with Australia’s ratification of the UN human rights convention?
Alby Schultz :I had difficultly in that whole process because it’s one thing to be appointing people to be debt collectors,
it’s another thing to be pointing people to chase up an alleged debt of $900M using taxpayers resources to do that in an environment
where much of the $900M in my view, based on the information that I have, is not centred around a person’s obligations to a child,
but are centred around a number of other contingencies. To what I’ve described their move as a jack booted approach and to be
quite frank, with you I think the comments that I’ve made would illustrate to people that I’m ashamed to be a member of a
government and a parliamentary colleague of a minister that would allow that sort of thing to happen.
Host : Yes, it’s astonishing the lack of empathy and the lack of understanding that is being displayed at quite senior levels over
this agency.
Alby Schultz : Yes, that’s absolutely right.
Host : We’ve run out of time Alby, thank you so much for coming on the show again, now just the booklet coming up
‘Child Support in Australia – A Heartfelt War for Relationships, Family and Money – The Battle for Balance’ … or the battle
for money.
Alby Schultz : The battle for balance and I mean any fair-minded person would have to understand that change is needed to
be made, I think the Parkinson Report, whilst not 100% in favour of, is not 100% supported by many, many people has in fact
gone part of the way to addressing many of the disgraceful discrepancies and illogical programs that have been introduced by
the Child Support Agency to hurt people. So but what I’m doing is I’m going to continue to do what I’m doing until such time
as many of the problems that the Child Support Agency have caused and don’t talk about on air are exposed for what they are;
hence my efforts to get this booklet together and put it out there and put another side of the story based on factual information
received and check out independently in the thousands of submissions I’ve received from all over the country.
Host : Well you’ve done some fantastic work in exposing what’s going on in the Agency and thank you very much, I’m sure
a lot of the separated fathers out there thank you very much for the great efforts that you’ve put in.
Alby Schultz : Don’t thank me- thank me when we get the system right and more importantly the children get what they’re entitled
to, not what the wife wants and what the wife has been doing to get spousal maintenance under the guise of money being extracted
to look after the child.
Host : You’ve done some great work Alby. That booklet ‘Child Support in Australia – A Heartfelt War for Relationships,
Family and Money’ will be available. Apparently you’re giving out copies to Dads in Distress so those sort of groups,
Dads in Distress, will be distributing copies of child support in Australia. Thank you very much for coming on the show.
Alby Schultz : My pleasure, nice speaking to you again John.Show more
Answer
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Alby Schultz 14th Aug 2006 – Radio Interview – Dads on the Air
Host: Alby Schultz is the only politician in Federal Parliament who has had the guts and the integrity to regularly speak up about the Child Support Agency and the catastrophic effects that it’s having on many peoples’ lives, both personally and on a broader social level. Now Alby, you’re putting out a new leaflet called ‘Child Support in Australia – A Heartfelt War’ for relationships, sorry I can’t read my own handwriting here, can you just tell us a bit about what the booklet’s about and its full title?
Alby Schultz: Yes, the booklet is headed ‘Child Support in Australia – A Heartfelt War of Relationships, Families and Money, the Battle for Balance, and it’s been compiled from the extensive database that I’ve collected over the last two years. In particular, which contains thousands and thousands of case examples of how the Child Support Agency, and indeed to a lesser degree, the Family Court, has created massive problems of a financial, social, and emotional type to different family groups.
These submissions were verified through personal contact and supporting documentation. A couple of law graduates from Edith Cohen University requested me to have access to my database, which I gave them. Out of that database, I allowed them a thousand submissions, and these submissions have been verified through these people with personal contact of supporting documentation. Therefore, they were correct accounts. And of the verified submissions, 557 of those thousand submissions were de-identified in order to protect the anonymity of the participants.
Host: And what, in general, is that research showing? We get a lot of devastated people showing up on our site and indeed coming on the show talking about the consequences, but what does this research show?
Alby Schultz: Well, the thematic content analysis identified two principle themes; those being of the Family Court and the Child Support Scheme.
In terms of the Family Court, participants reported anger and resentment associated with the costs and the ability of residential parents to exploit the system for financial gain, and it was also suggested that the legal system was unable to enforce orders relating to access.
In relation to the Child Support Scheme, two sub-themes emerged. These sub-themes were administrative fairness and fairness in terms of policy and legislation. The participant narratives described the system that was weighted heavily in favor of the residential parent, but of course, the consequences for non-residential parents were described as financial, psychological, or physical, and the negative financial impact on second families was described as significant, rendering it impossible for non-resident parents to form functional re-partners relationship. They had been completely financially stripped and emotionally devastated.
The negative impact on the psychological well-being was a cause for concern with about 31.7% of the sample; reporting depression, anxiety, or reduced motivation, and there’s 9% of the sample who successfully suicided. The effect of perceived fairness in relation to the Child Support Scheme and the Family Court requires further consideration. From work that has been done, it looks like about 6.1% of all child support cases terminate due to the death of a party. That comes out at about 12 deaths a day, now not all of those are suicides, but there is a huge body of thought that would suggest that the CSA is very closely related to the high death rates among separated men.
Host: Is that something that you found confirmed in your research?
Alby Schultz: Absolutely, that was very much highlighted in the, I think I’ve got somewhere in the vicinity of five and a half thousand submissions from all over Australia, and as I said, of the thousand cases that I gave the Edith Cohen University lecturers, there were, if I could give you an idea of what was found in those thousand submissions, there was:
- 21% of them were centred around abuse of power, that is abuse of power by the Child Support Agency
- 19% of unfair assessments
- 15.8% problems related between payers and payees.
- Extreme hardship due to Child Support Agency with 15.2%
- Formula complaints comprised of 12.7% of the parcel
- The Family Court and Family Law issues 7.7%
- Unsatisfactory staff 2.8%.
- Paternity issues which is escalating at the moment was then at 1.9%
- Death due to the Child Support Agency was 1.5%.
- Suicides and attempted suicides is 1.3%
- And the Child Support Agency having access to bank account and tax returns was 1%.
Alby Schultz: So there’s a pretty significant cross-section of all of those problems which are affecting people and creating massive social problems.
Host: I guess what really puzzles a lot of people is why does the government persist with a scheme which is so widely hated. I mean, the British have just abolished their child support scheme. The fiasco one of the ironies was that we sent personnel over to advise them on their child support agencies, as they regarded ours as a success.
Alby Schultz: Well, you’ve got to keep remembering that this scheme was introduced in the mid-1980s, and since then, the Child Support Agency has been allowed to, by successive government Ministers, to practice “unheard of powerful procedures” which is creating enormous problems for people.
Host: Now it’s correct, isn’t it, for people that don’t understand this, that a child support review officer can estimate your income or deem your income to be basically anything they like?
Alby Schultz: Yes, and I’ve actually received some pretty good information on what they call this “capacity to earn”. It’s not to my knowledge; contained in any of the legislation that drives the Australian Tax Office as an example – so they’re an element on their own who have an intrusive bias system which ignores all sense of fairness, decency, and partiality when it deliberates against the payer, and to the extent that the child has become secondary to its agenda. It is quite obviously to attack, discredit, and punish the payer for what can only be described extensive use of powers that have impinged on the privacy and the rights of individuals that no other department, including the Australian Taxation Office, has ever done in the history of this country.
Host: And there is an enormous human sadness behind this, isn’t there?
Alby Schultz: Yes, that’s right, and that lives are absolutely and completely wrecked by an out-of-control agency.
Host: Yes, and I think in answer to your question before, that the governments of the day have seen it as a highly emotional issue and tend to move away from addressing it and simple fear of the women’s vote, or is it…
Alby Schultz: Well, a political part of it has got something to do with it, but I mean that’s not an issue because fair-minded Australians, including women, are very much part of the significant number of submissions that I’ve had. I’ve had submissions from former wives who say the system is unfair, I’ve had detailed submissions from people who have been kept in ignorance of what’s been happening to the father of the child by the Child Support Agency. I’ve had sisters, daughters, women, mothers, and grandmothers who are picking up the emotional and the financial side of the problems associated with it. That’s why I’m angry about this broad-based announcement by Minister Hockey that payers owe payees $900 million. I’ve asked him to prove that to me because my figures don’t show that. If you look into what information I have, you find that much of the debt that’s owed or allegedly owed by these payers, some of them I might add, a small percentage of them, are people who deserve to be scrutinized and punished, but the majority of them who owe money are owed money on the basis of this nonsensical thing of “capacity to earn”.
As an example, if Alby Schultz was earning $70,000 in a job and because of the pressures after a marriage break up, was so stressed out that he decided, and I say he in the context of the majority of payers are men, some are women – but the majority are men – he then can’t cope and gives his job away and goes into another job that hasn’t got the pressures on him at a lesser rate of pay per annum, as an example down to $50,000 a year, but because he was earning $70,000 he’s taxed and penalized under child support on the basis of what they call capacity to earn, which was the original $70,000. That then builds up a debt because financially he can’t keep up with the amount of money he is required to pay under his old wage. He’s then, his debt – then its compounded by a 15% interest on for every month that he doesn’t pay, so the debt keeps escalating to the point where he will never be able to pay it back and can’t pay it back.
Host: We’re talking with Alby Schultz; he’s the member for Hume, and one of the few politicians in Federal Parliament who has had the guts and the integrity to speak up on the Child Support Agency’s operations. We’ll be back in a moment.
Host: Now we’re talking with Alby Schultz, he’s a member for Hume and one of the few politicians in Australia who has had the guts and the integrity to speak up about the personal social catastrophe of the Child Support Agency, welcome back Alby.
Alby Schultz: My pleasure, John.
Host: Now just before we get stuck into things, I thought we should mention that your vote at the last election went up 5%, so for all those politicians in Australia that think they’re going to alienate the women’s vote by daring to speak up on these issues, your vote went up.
Alby Schultz: That’s absolutely right.
Host: You must be a very safe sitting member by now.
Alby Schultz: Yes, I am, and I think my experiences and the way in which I’ve tried to address the problem shows that what I said in your program earlier and that is that most Australians are fair-minded and when the true modus operandi of the Child Support Agency is exposed publicly, people start thinking about it and understand it’s unfair and it’s unreasonable.
Host: Because of course surveys always show that the public supports the notion of parents supporting their children. We all do – So what is it, a classic case of good intentions gone wrong?
Alby Schultz: Yes, I think what’s happened is it’s been driven by gender bias within the Child Support Agency because I can be corrected when I make this statement, but about 66% of all employees in the Child Support Agency are single females and of the remainder, they’re single males, so you have a situation where you’ve got single people making judgments, and in many cases, gender bias judgments against payers in an environment where they have absolutely no knowledge of marriage and how marriages operate and how marriages can go through difficult times and what causes it.
Host: Can you give some case examples that you’ve collected of the sort of material that will be available in this booklet?
Alby Schultz: Yes, sure. Look, I’ll give you a case example of two and possibly a third one, because the third one’s a little bit lengthy, but it’s a very heartbreaking case. But this case – the person and I’m not going to repeat the person’s name because I’m keeping their anonymity to protect them.
“I was divorced in 1992, three children from marriage, a daughter from a previous marriage. January 2005 CSA took $3200 from my bank account without notice. By September 2005, my children were all adults and employed, and I still had a debt of almost $25,000 with the Child Support Agency. I contacted Alby Schultz out of sheer desperation for advice. Then armed with good advice, I then negotiated with my ex-wife to waive my CSA debt to her as I was 61 years old and would never be able to pay the debt. CSA accepted the letter from my ex-wife.”
Host: He could have whistled Dixie until the next millennium if the wife didn’t see reason.
Alby Schultz: Yes, that’s absolutely right. Another one here is centered around a paternity issue.
“On Wednesday 8th of February 2006, I received a letter from the CSA that had the most devastating effect on my family. I felt it necessary to write to you and tell my story in the hope that you will be able to help. The letter told me that my ex-wife, who I have been separated from for 17 years, was claiming child support for her 16-year-old daughter. I called the CSA and spoke to a case officer. I told her that I did not believe that I was the father because I was not on the birth certificate. I have been told repeatedly by my ex-wife that I was not the father and because of the timing of the girl’s birth, I believed it to be true. I explained to the case officer that I had a court document giving me sole custody of the child of the marriage, a boy born 22^nd September 1987. These documents were dated 1994, which was some four years after the birth of the girl. The case officer told me that it didn’t matter that I had raised my son without any input from his mother. She also said that the only criteria that had to be met from my ex-wife to claim child support was that the girl was born in 1990 while my ex and I were still legally married. We divorced in 1994. And because my ex had applied for child support and met that criteria, they would process the application. The case officer, however, did seem a little surprised that it had taken my ex-wife 16 years before making the claim. The case officer told me that they would be doing the assessment on $110,000 despite my tax return showing a taxable income of $66,000 as all my legal deductions and losses on some investment property was added on to the taxable income. This meant my CSA annual amount would be $17,263. I pleaded with the case officer to give some time to seek legal advice and to see my accountant, to which she granted me an extra two days. When it has taken 16 years for a claim to be made – why the rush? Knowing that I didn’t have the income to pay $17,263 per year, I started to look at what my alternatives were. Do I get a second job on the weekends? I already work 60-65 hour week and I would
Please fix paragraph spacing in the following text: I fail to understand how
my ex-wife could claim child support after 16 years, regardless of whether I’m the girl’s biological father or not. I would never
have walked away from that child if I had believed her to be my daughter and now that my ex-wife has -what-changed her mind,
I am expected to be a financial parent. As there seems to be no mediation process and my circumstances are not taken in to
consideration before an assessment is made by the CSA, I am pleading with you Alby to consider the circumstances outlined in
this letter and try to get some help for me”.
Alby Schultz: And the postscript on that said this client has taken his case to the courts. CSA did start to collect. Then the ex-wife
then suddenly withdrew her CSA application. Court costs to the client were $6,000. So I mean there’s a classic example of how
administratively and professionally the Child Support Agency is absolutely disgraceful.
Host : Alby there are hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of similar stories, many of them with sadder endings than that one.
We just want to ask, we’re running out of time, we want to ask, the recent crack down…130 something million dollars.
OK I’d like your comment on Hockey’s statement that he wishes the CSA to actively chasing them to the grave and then his
subsequent proposal to spend $136M of taxpayers money to pay for a jack booted mob to hang fathers to the grave. Do you also
believe, with such statements by Hockey, that in accordance with Australia’s ratification of the UN human rights convention?
Alby Schultz :I had difficultly in that whole process because it’s one thing to be appointing people to be debt collectors,
it’s another thing to be pointing people to chase up an alleged debt of $900M using taxpayers resources to do that in an environment
where much of the $900M in my view, based on the information that I have, is not centred around a person’s obligations to a child,
but are centred around a number of other contingencies. To what I’ve described their move as a jack booted approach and to be
quite frank, with you I think the comments that I’ve made would illustrate to people that I’m ashamed to be a member of a
government and a parliamentary colleague of a minister that would allow that sort of thing to happen.
Host : Yes, it’s astonishing the lack of empathy and the lack of understanding that is being displayed at quite senior levels over
this agency.
Alby Schultz : Yes, that’s absolutely right.
Host : We’ve run out of time Alby, thank you so much for coming on the show again, now just the booklet coming up
‘Child Support in Australia – A Heartfelt War for Relationships, Family and Money – The Battle for Balance’ … or the battle
for money.
Alby Schultz : The battle for balance and I mean any fair-minded person would have to understand that change is needed to
be made, I think the Parkinson Report, whilst not 100% in favour of, is not 100% supported by many, many people has in fact
gone part of the way to addressing many of the disgraceful discrepancies and illogical programs that have been introduced by
the Child Support Agency to hurt people. So but what I’m doing is I’m going to continue to do what I’m doing until such time
as many of the problems that the Child Support Agency have caused and don’t talk about on air are exposed for what they are;
hence my efforts to get this booklet together and put it out there and put another side of the story based on factual information
received and check out independently in the thousands of submissions I’ve received from all over the country.
Host : Well you’ve done some fantastic work in exposing what’s going on in the Agency and thank you very much, I’m sure
a lot of the separated fathers out there thank you very much for the great efforts that you’ve put in.
Alby Schultz : Don’t thank me- thank me when we get the system right and more importantly the children get what they’re entitled
to, not what the wife wants and what the wife has been doing to get spousal maintenance under the guise of money being extracted
to look after the child.
Host : You’ve done some great work Alby. That booklet ‘Child Support in Australia – A Heartfelt War for Relationships,
Family and Money’ will be available. Apparently you’re giving out copies to Dads in Distress so those sort of groups,
Dads in Distress, will be distributing copies of child support in Australia. Thank you very much for coming on the show.
Alby Schultz : My pleasure, nice speaking to you again John.Show more
Answer
Here’s the text with corrected paragraph spacing:
Alby Schultz: And the postscript on that said this client has taken his case to the courts. CSA did start to collect. Then the ex-wife suddenly withdrew her CSA application. Court costs to the client were $6,000. So I mean there’s a classic example of how administratively and professionally the Child Support Agency is absolutely disgraceful.
Host: Alby, there are hundreds upon hundreds upon hundreds of similar stories, many of them with sadder endings than that one. We just want to ask, we’re running out of time, we want to ask about the recent crackdown… 130 something million dollars.
Host: OK, I’d like your comment on Hockey’s statement that he wishes the CSA to actively chase them to the grave and then his subsequent proposal to spend $136M of taxpayers’ money to pay for a jack-booted mob to hang fathers to the grave. Do you also believe, with such statements by Hockey, that in accordance with Australia’s ratification of the UN human rights convention?
Alby Schultz: I had difficulty in that whole process because it’s one thing to be appointing people to be debt collectors, it’s another thing to be pointing people to chase up an alleged debt of $900M using taxpayers’ resources to do that in an environment where much of the $900M, in my view, based on the information that I have, is not centered around a person’s obligations to a child, but are centered around a number of other contingencies. To what I’ve described their move as a jack-booted approach and to be quite frank, with you, I think the comments that I’ve made would illustrate to people that I’m ashamed to be a member of a government and a parliamentary colleague of a minister that would allow that sort of thing to happen.
Host: Yes, it’s astonishing the lack of empathy and the lack of understanding that is being displayed at quite senior levels over this agency.
Alby Schultz: Yes, that’s absolutely right.
Host: We’ve run out of time Alby, thank you so much for coming on the show again. Now, just the booklet coming up, ‘Child Support in Australia – A Heartfelt War for Relationships, Family and Money – The Battle for Balance’… or the battle for money.
Alby Schultz: The battle for balance, and I mean any fair-minded person would have to understand that change is needed to be made. I think the Parkinson Report, whilst not 100% in favor of, is not 100% supported by many, many people, has in fact gone part of the way to addressing many of the disgraceful discrepancies and illogical programs that have been introduced by the Child Support Agency to hurt people. So, but what I’m doing is I’m going to continue to do what I’m doing until such time as many of the problems that the Child Support Agency have caused and don’t talk about on air are exposed for what they are; hence my efforts to get this booklet together and put it out there and put another side of the story based on factual information received and checked out independently in the thousands of submissions I’ve received from all over the country.
Host: Well, you’ve done some fantastic work in exposing what’s going on in the Agency, and thank you very much. I’m sure a lot of the separated fathers out there thank you very much for the great efforts that you’ve put in.
Alby Schultz: Don’t thank me—thank me when we get the system right and more importantly, the children get what they’re entitled to, not what the wife wants and what the wife has been doing to get spousal maintenance under the guise of money being extracted to look after the child.
Host: You’ve done some great work, Alby. That booklet, ‘Child Support in Australia – A Heartfelt War for Relationships, Family and Money’, will be available. Apparently, you’re giving out copies to Dads in Distress, so those sorts of groups, Dads in Distress, will be distributing copies of child support in Australia. Thank you very much for coming on the show.
Alby Schultz: My pleasure, nice speaking to you again, John.