Men's Rights Agency ~ Child
Support
The Cost of the Child Support
Scheme
Richard Cruickshank's letter to the Sydney Morning Herald & Melbourne
Age in response to the recently announced CSA changes.
Bettina Arndt (2/10/97 SMH/Age) talks of the costly Child Support Scheme
and questions whether the cost of collection can be justified. Bettina is
on the right track but research reveals that the cost to all Australians
is far greater than that.
There are three costs associated with Child Support:
-
Social Cost
The laws covering the scheme are totally undemocratic, biased against
non-custodial parents (92% men) and very divisive as they deliberately bind
parents together in a continuing and potentially hostile relationship for
life, arbitrated by Public Servants of all people. This is certainly not
in the interest of any children, who were supposed to be the beneficiaries.
-
Monetary Cost
The child support formulae is nothing but harsh taxation levied upon
non-custodial parents at unreasonably high levels and subject to increase
at will by custodial parents through the Child Support Review Office, which
is nothing more than a "Kangaroo court" without any conscience. The means
that the incentive to work or carrying out business activities is seriously
diminished. Independent research reveals that more than 18% of the 462,000
non-custodial parents are unemployed and 5% or 23,000 have ceased all business
activities which in turn employs others. Taking into account public service
propaganda of falsely claimed social security clawbacks, the taxpayer will
still pay a well hidden $1,500 million for this so called family service
in 1997/98.
-
Political Cost
History has shown any Governments that attempts to impose harsh, discriminatory
taxes and or meddle in and control citizen's daily lives in this way is in
for a rude awakening. By the end of this Governments second term, they will
have to answer to more than 800,000 very angry non-custodial parents, mostly
dads, thousands of whom don't even have access to their children. Add to
this, taxpayers who will get the waste bill totalling $7,400 million for
the 160,000 unemployed non-custodial parents who have no incentive to work
or even live for that matter.
No country can afford the economic and social cost of biased socialist ideologies
as applied by the previous Labour Government who already received severe
punishment from voters at the last election.
What's wrong with each parent being responsible for their share of 'the basic
cost' of maintaining their children.
Richard A. Cruickshank
Richard is a director of Property Investment Research Pty. Ltd.
Melbourne.
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