Minister, the Greens amendments seek to protect a woman's right to be financially independent from her partner and to prevent ex-partners from weaponising the child support system. Currently, the New Tax System (Family Assistance) Act 1999 requires Services Australia to assume that a parent who uses private collect has been paid the full amount of child support that they are owed, regardless of whether or not the child support has actually been received. In practice, this legislative assumption artificially inflates the receiving parent's income, resulting in a family tax benefit debt. Because of this legislative presumption, women are doubly squeezed. Ex-partners withhold the child support that women are owed, and Services Australia simultaneously raises and recoups family tax benefit debts against women.

We know that there is widespread manipulation and weaponization of child support, often as an extension of abuse that happened within a relationship. Mothers and children are hurt the most by this abuse. One in five children are in the child support scheme and all of them deserve the financial support required to have fulfilling childhoods, yet two-thirds of single mothers are owed child support and many of those same mothers also face enormous tax bills, because their ex-partner has been able to use the system against them. The government chasing women for debts when child support is still owed is outrageous and unfair. It puts women and children at financial risk and it amplifies the impact of their exes' financial abuse.

Since our amendment was circulated, the government has introduced their first 'ending financial abuse in the child support scheme' bill, and one of the provisions in this bill makes a small change to family tax benefit debts for women privately managing child support. While the announcement is a step in the right direction in making these systems safer, it still puts the burden overwhelmingly on the shoulders of women. Unlike the Greens's amendment to this current bill, the government's proposal just puts more responsibility at women's feet.

Instead of preventing unfair family tax benefit debts in the first place, the government has only suggested holding off on recouping family tax benefit debts for three months. During those three months, women are expected to contact the other parent to chase down the child support that they're owed. This reinforces the burden mainly on single mothers for the financial irresponsibility of other parents and ignores the reality of women who are victim-survivors of coercive control and economic abuse. Exemptions that require self-reporting just mean that women who are in dangerous situations are punished by our social security system, rather than supported.

Minister, will your government support the Greens's amendment to this bill, which essentially just requires Services Australia to do their homework and use every measure possible to verify whether child support has actually been paid before raising a family tax benefit debt?

It's good to get to this point today. We've been dealing with a lot of legislation. The issues that Senator Allman-Payne raise in relation to this amendment—the amendment proposes that the legislation be amended to remove deeming in private collection arrangements so we no longer assume people have collected their full child support entitlement and we create an obligation on the secretary to notify an individual of the child support collection methods and how they affect family tax benefit payments. The effect of the amendment proposed by the Greens will mean that amounts of privately collected child support will only be counted under the family tax benefit maintenance income test when a parent declares that they have received such income.

The government won't be supporting this amendment proposed by the Greens. But I would also say that Minister Plibersek and I have been looking at this issue closely. It has been raised with us by a number of organisations, mainly women's organisations, who feel that the child support system can be used in a way that impacts the primary parent and, in certain situations, creates a debt around family tax benefit payment. So looking at the ways that those two systems interact is part of the work that Minister Plibersek and I have announced. Not only have we announced it; we have put money in the budget to deal with it—to reduce the weaponisation of the child support system and the way that it impacts the family tax benefit, in particular the accrual of debts owing to the primary parent in relation to how the other parent pays or provides that child support money.

We will have a bill to enact the first tranche of those reforms; I think it's in the House now. Yes, it has been introduced into the House. That will deal with some of the issues that are identified by this amendment. This bill is a technical bill that makes necessary but minor legislative changes to ensure legal clarity and alignment between legislation, policy and practice.

So, Senator Allman-Payne, there is a bill coming your way and coming the way of the Senate that will be, I think, a more appropriate vehicle for some of these discussions around how those two systems interact. We are aware of it. That's why we're the first government ever to tackle this issue. As Minister for Women, I have met with kids who have come through the child support system who have had one parent behave in a way that has kept them in poverty and often in a way that mean debts have been incurred by the primary carer parent because of the way the system works. So the work that Minister Plibersek and I have done is around systems abuse. We've got a taskforce that works across government looking at areas where systems can be weaponised. The area that was identified as the most urgent for government attention was child support. Through that, it was not only the nonpayment of child support, the noncompliance with child support and the different arrangements between agency collect and private collect but also how the payment interacts with other payments across our payment system. They are the areas where the allocation of funding has been made by this government.

It's over $200 million. I'm trying to think of what the number is. It's well over $200 million. I think maybe $220 million is going into making sure our IT systems in particular but also our policy responses are able to deal with some of the impacts of the weaponisation of the child support system. It's things like nonpayment as punishment and how we deal with that. It's how we enforce departure orders—that's for the people who are refusing to pay but then want to go overseas. It's how people report, or don't report, their income through the tax office. Nonreporting for a number of years their income is what leads to the issue with the family tax payment because the primary carer doesn't get the payment and so they are then are eligible for the family tax payment only to have the other parent then lodge all of their income returns for a number of years and, all of a sudden, that primary parent is in debt to Centrelink because they've been overpaid family tax payment prior to that income being provided to them.

These are all the areas that the government has acknowledged are a problem. We can't be out lecturing other organisations about ensuring their systems don't weaponise domestic family abuse or violence and not have a look at our own systems. So, whilst we won't be supporting this amendment, we do acknowledge this. There is a bill currently in the House that will make its way to the Senate—and hopefully the Senate will be able to deal with it—that will allow us to stop some of the behaviour that we've been seeing. We believe that, if you have dependent children, regardless of whether your relationship breaks down, you have a responsibility to look after those children until they are adults.

We have two different systems—private collect and agency collect. It is up to individuals to determine how they want to engage with the child support system. Sorry, I should correct the record. It's a $183 million package of targeted reforms to make the child support system safer and fairer. These reforms are the first major changes to the child support system in nearly 20 years. Even though many have known about these issues and campaigns have been held to change the way our system operates, we are the first government that's actually stumped up the money for changing this and making the system work better for children and for those primary parents.

I've met with primary parents in a number of jurisdictions. I've met with adults around the country who as children lived under the system where these problems emerged. It's hard to have a meeting like that and not walk away wanting to do everything you can to change the system for the better. I think of the bravery of some of those kids. One who's just a university student out of home acknowledged that their carer parent worked a couple of jobs in order to get them through school and through university because the other parent made a choice about whether or not they were prepared to pay for their children as a punishment to that other parent. It is impossible to leave those meetings and not want to ensure that you're doing everything you can to make the system better and fairer.

So I understand where Senator Allman-Payne is coming from. I understand the motivation—the good motivation—behind some of the changes she seeks. But we don't believe this bill is the appropriate place, and there is another bill coming your way for this discussion to be had.

Order, Minister. It being 8 pm, I shall report to the Senate.

Progress reported.