Latest news with #Ombudsman
Epoch Times
3 hours ago
- General
- Epoch Times
Child Support System Being Weaponised for Financial Abuse, Ombudsman Found
Parents are weaponising Australia's child support system to commit financial abuse, with Services Australia's passive oversight further compounding the harm, the Commonwealth Ombudsman has found. According to the June 3 report, some parents are evading their obligations by deliberately withholding tax returns, misrepresenting earnings, and using threats or coercion to prevent the other parent from seeking help. The Child Support program, which handles about half of all arrangements, failed to proactively detect or stop such manipulation, the Ombudsman said. 'Services Australia is not doing enough to actively deal with the weaponisation of the Child Support program. While its approach is well-intentioned and welfare-focused, it is not helping to get the money owed to parents when their kids need it the most,' quotes the report.
Rhyl Journal
13 hours ago
- General
- Rhyl Journal
Denbighshire standards committee to discuss complaints
The committee is set to discuss a confidential report by the council's monitoring officer, providing an overview of 'complaints against members lodged with the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales'. But Denbighshire has listed the item as restricted, meaning the committee will likely vote to remove both the press and public from the debate. The reasons given for making the item confidential are that the information is 'likely to reveal the identity of an individual' and that the 'public interest in maintaining the exemption outweighs the public interest in disclosing the information'. The meeting is set to take place on Friday at the council's Ruthin County Hall HQ. Also on the agenda is an 'Our Findings' report from the Ombudsman. The standards committee will be updated on councillor conduct cases published - although no recent complaints were upheld against Denbighshire members. The report highlights the Ombudsman's change from the old quarterly Code of Conduct Casebook format to a new online 'Our Findings' section, which offers a searchable database of investigated complaints. Covering the period between 28 February and 27 May 2025, nine Code of Conduct cases were published nationally. Six related to respect and equality; two to disclosure and registration of interest; and one to upholding the law. Of those, four resulted in no action, three were discontinued, and two found no evidence of a breach. But none of the cases involved Denbighshire councillors.
West Australian
21 hours ago
- Politics
- West Australian
‘End up homeless': Child support weaponised against single mums
Australian child support frameworks are in urgent need of reform as a new report reveals the number of parents, especially women, financially abused through the system. The Commonwealth ombudsman into the 'weaponisation' of the child support program has revealed the dark underbelly of the financial abuse rife throughout the system, with more than 153,000 parents having a combined $1.9bn in unpaid child support. Parents lying about their income, deliberately reducing their earnings, lying about how much they care for the children, or just straight up refusing to pay have all been identified as evidence the system is failing families, especially women and children. 'The legislation needs reform to address systemic problems and help Services Australia ensure children are not deprived of the financial support they need,' Commonwealth Ombudsman Iain Anderson said. In a survey of more than 500 separated mothers, four in five said their former partner had used the program to commit financial abuse. The system is meant to support more than 1.2 million separated parents and 1.1 million affected children. About 84 per cent of parents receiving child support payments to be women. The report condemned Services Australia as being 'unfair and unreasonable' by failing to use its powers to enforce payments. 'This passive approach is unfair,' the report said. 'It allows some paying parents to manipulate the system to avoid their financial responsibility in raising their children, largely without consequences.' It is reported that the Services Australia lacked the frameworks to proactively respond to cases of abuse. 'I am a single mum trying to look after my children. One has a disability. Services Australia is taking $500 from me a week and I simply cannot afford this,' one woman wrote in a complaint to the Ombudsman. 'My rent alone is $580. I am going to end up homeless with my kids and Services Australia is not understanding at all.' Under the current system, when a child support payer lodges their tax return, the government assumes any outstanding child support has been paid, which raises an overpayment of the Family Tax Benefit Part A. Services Australia then recovers the 'overpaid' FTB A, whether or not the child support has actually been paid. 'This kind of financial abuse is something our member centres see all the time, so we are very pleased to have it recognised in this morning's report from the Commonwealth Ombudsman,' Economic Justice Australia chief executive Kate Allingham said. 'However, what the scope of this report makes clear is that there is something broken at the heart of the social security system. 'It's mind-blowing that it is so easy for a perpetrator to inflict such profound financial harm on another individual; that they are so easily able to create a debt for a former partner which Services Australia is then required to pursue.' The ombudsman made eight recommendations to Services Australia, including developing a publicly available strategy on addressing financial abuse through child support, more effectively enforcing payments, and training staff to better understand financial abuse. All recommendations were approved. 'We thank the Ombudsman for the thorough investigation into this important issue. Financial abuse and all forms of family and domestic violence are serious and damaging issues affecting many of our customers,' a Services Australia spokesman said. 'Services Australia accepts all eight recommendations, and work has already begun to implement these fully. 'We'll implement many of the recommendations by December 2025 and the remainder by June 2026. 'We know financial abuse is a complex issue, and we're working closely with the Department of Social Services, the Australian Taxation Office, and the Office for Women to address this. 'While legislation limits some of the improvements we can make, we acknowledge there's work we can do within the existing policy to better support parents who are child Support customers and their children.' The Department of Social Services also accepted all conditions, except for introducing a Bill to amend the law to address legal limitations for the current system outlined in the report. 'Today's Ombudsman's report confirms child support is being weaponised against single mothers and that government systems have failed to recognise or respond to this. These failures mean the systems themselves have enabled financial abuse,' Single Mother Families Australia chief executive Teresa Edwards said, 'The concerns we have raised on behalf of single mothers over many years have been vindicated.'
ABC News
a day ago
- Business
- ABC News
Parents able to 'manipulate' child support system free of consequences: ombudsman report
Australia's child support system has been weaponised for financial abuse that is "amplified" by Services Australia, according to a Commonwealth Ombudsman's investigation. That abuse included parents not making payments, not filing tax returns to disguise income, lying to reduce income and being abusive or violent to stop a parent seeking help. This abuse was amplified by a tax system that calculated income assuming all support payments were made — even if they weren't — and by procedures at Services Australia that could disclose sensitive information to ex-partners, the report found. "This is really important because child support is all about children — vulnerable children — who need to be financially supported while they're growing up," Ombudsman Iain Anderson said. In Australia more than 1.2 million separated parents have an arrangement that sees one parent pay the other to assist with the costs of raising an estimated one million children. Services Australia is responsible for about half of those arrangements through the Child Support program, with the rest in what is called Private Collect, where one parent directly pays the other. The Ombudsman's report, released exclusively to ABC News, concluded that Services Australia was acting in an "unfair and unreasonable manner" in not using available powers to stop widespread financial abuse. "This passive approach is unfair. It allows some paying parents to manipulate the system to avoid their financial responsibility in raising their children, largely without consequences," the report concluded. The amount of money some parents are avoiding paying is big. Mr Anderson said 153,000 parents had a combined $1.9 billion in outstanding child support debts in December last year. The report showed outstanding payments disproportionately impacted mothers — with 84 per cent of those receiving payments being female. The Ombudsman's report made eight recommendations, including having Services Australia track financial abuse and use its enforcement powers to claw back the $1.9 billion in unpaid child support. Current Services Australia processes can require a parent to tell their non-paying ex-partner their location or workplace, which can be abused by non-paying parents and re-traumatise parents who have experienced domestic violence, the Ombudsman said. "They have and go through these very burdensome processes, so that in itself can exacerbate previous abuse," Mr Anderson said. "We've certainly had complainants who said to them that this made them feel very unsafe and they in fact withdrew from processes and rather than seeking to pursue unpaid child support." Do you have a story to share? Email Jane (not her real name), a single mother of three from Canberra, said she has gone through experiences like that. "That's the way I felt and again the scrutiny was on myself and what I had submitted. The focus was not on the needs of the children." Jane said she almost walked away from seeking extra support for her youngest child, who has significant medical needs, because the demands for documentation were so onerous. "The forgotten party in all of this is actually the children. I think that's a really important point," she said. The Ombudsman's report called for a legislative fix to force Services Australia to make the system fairer. Currently, Services Australia is required to assume all child support has been paid when assessing eligibility for tax concessions for parents like Family Tax Benefit A. This can result in parents having a tax debt for child support they are owed but did not receive, a process the Ombudsman said "absolutely" victimised parents. "This is unfair and places those parents at a double disadvantage — in effect amplifying the impact of the financial abuse they are suffering through the actions of their former partner," the report concluded. Services Australia currently has a restriction, allowing it to collect just three months of unpaid child support if a parent changed from private collection to the government system. The report recommended legislation that would also lift that restriction. Legislative fixes were also required to allow debts to be recovered from bank accounts held in joint names, allow better information sharing between agencies and track domestic violence, the report said. In a statement, a Services Australia spokesperson said it fully accepted the recommendations and would be working to implement them between December 2025 and June 2026. "Financial abuse and all forms of family and domestic violence are serious and damaging issues affecting many of our customers," the spokesperson said. "While legislation limits some of the improvements we can make, we acknowledge there's work we can do within the existing policy to better support parents who are Child Support customers and their children." In a statement on behalf of the Social Services and Government Services ministers Tanya Plibersek and Katy Gallagher, a spokesperson acknowledged child support was being used to "exploit and traumatise women" and that the government was acting. "We are currently undertaking a number of reviews across the Child Support Scheme, looking closely at compliance, with a focus on income accuracy, collection and enforcement," the spokesperson said. "This work will be finalised in the coming months and will help inform future reforms to ensure that the Child Support Scheme cannot be misused as a vehicle for ongoing financial control or abuse after separation." Terese Edwards, CEO of Single Mother Families Australia, has long lobbied for change and said several inquiries over the decades have identified similar flaws. "The child support system has been a problem for decades. That's witnessed in the $1.9 billion debt owed to children," Ms Edwards said. The organisation said it was optimistic there was growing momentum for major changes to child support following a recent inquiry into the Australian Tax Office and a parliamentary one into financial abuse. "The [payment] levels are so unrealistically low and unreliable, to the point that banking institutions don't use that income when they're looking at income coming in," Ms Edwards said. "Also, real estate agencies don't take it into account when they're looking at rental properties."
HKFP
4 days ago
- Politics
- HKFP
In deleted Ombudsman reports saga, silencing legislators hinders their ability to hold authorities to account
The saga of the deleted reports on the Ombudsman's website continues. So far, he has apparently refused to restore digital copies of pre-2023 investigation reports, annual reports, and other data for easy public access. The reasons provided for removing them (data overload, they're dated, government departments have accepted their recommendations, etc.) are generally unconvincing. In many cases, the problems that necessitated the investigations continue. Chief Executive John Lee pointed out that the Ombudsman is independent of the government. He 'expressed confidence that the Office of the Ombudsman will do its work effectively and address public concerns,' RTHK reported. The deleted reports saga raises significant issues about Hong Kong's constitutional system of dual accountability. According to Basic Law Article 43, the chief executive, who is the head of the government, is accountable both to the central government and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR). In their book, The Constitutional System of the Hong Kong SAR, law scholars Albert Chen and Yap Po Jen call this 'the most important and distinctive feature of the HKSAR's political system.' They go on to say: 'Insofar as the central authorities' interest in and views on Hong Kong's development converge with those of the general public in Hong Kong, there should be no conflict in the discharge of these dual roles. 'On the other hand, when there is a divergence in the interests of the central authorities in the HKSAR and the interests of Hong Kong as perceived by a majority of Hong Kong's population, the CE would be placed in an unenviable position' (emphasis mine). Chen and Yap write that it is not easy for the chief executive to retain the trust and confidence of both Beijing and the people of Hong Kong. This formulation recognises that there could be multiple understandings of the interests of Hong Kong: the central government's understandings, the local government's understandings, and understandings as perceived by most of the people of Hong Kong. These understandings might converge, or not. In the Ombudsman saga, likely only the local government's and the people of Hong Kong's understandings are involved. Chen and Yap point out that in Hong Kong's system, the executive and legislative authorities are expected to both 'coordinate with and check each other.' Both the Basic Law and the Sino-British Joint Declaration provide that 'the executive shall be accountable to the legislature.' That is, the Legislative Council (LegCo) should play a key role in holding the government to account. The chief executive acknowledged 'public concerns' and 'public debate' on the deleted Ombudsman reports. A handful of legislators have spoken up. One report identified six LegCo members who spoke out or raised questions: Michael Tien, Doreen Kong, Tik Chi-yuen, Tang Ka-piu, Eunice Yung, and Tommy Cheung. These are mainly pro-establishment patriots. Subsequently, the local media reported that authorities silenced LegCo on this issue. Authorities sent out 'warm reminders' that LegCo members should not 'follow up' or 'comment' on the Ombudsman saga. This gives the impression that LegCo is simply an extension of the government, speaking for the government only. What of its checking role? If, as Chen and Yap write, accountability to the HKSAR means accountability to the interests of Hong Kong as perceived by a majority of Hong Kong's population, why did the authorities silence LegCo? Perhaps they believe that silencing criticism is in the interests of the Hong Kong people, or authorities perceive that LegCo is insufficiently representative of the Hong Kong people and therefore should have no right to speak. This seems unlikely given the efforts the government made during the 2021 legislative elections to convince us that LegCo was representative. When authorities silence LegCo, who speaks for the interests of Hong Kong as perceived by a majority of the people? In the past, Hong Kongers have valued accountability, openness and transparency. Indeed, that is one reason why 55 to 60 per cent of voters consistently supported pan-democrats in elections when they had the opportunity. As late as 2018, the HKSAR government also declared that it supported these values. The Ombudsman's action seems to undermine them, arguably not in the interests of Hong Kong. An unanticipated consequence of the saga may be to boost the role and credibility of civil society in Hong Kong. The deleted reports are of considerable value to all those interested in public policy. Digital copies of all the Ombudsman's pre-2022 reports are available on the Wayback Machine. Non-government organisations may download them, provide searchable catalogues and make them publicly available. Would an alternative Ombudsman's website be in the interests of Hong Kong? Is this really what the authorities want? The Ombudsman's deleted reports saga tells us that Legco has lost some capacity to hold authorities to account. It tells us that officials expect Legco to speak for the government and not for the people of Hong Kong. Yet, LegCo members should be able to speak out on issues such as this. Authorities should understand that speaking out is not 'attacking' the government but trying to improve local governance. LegCo members' constitutional role includes checking the government. Authorities should relax the gag order on LegCo members so that they can better serve the people. This will build trust in our institutions, which is in everyone's interest. HKFP is an impartial platform & does not necessarily share the views of opinion writers or advertisers. HKFP presents a diversity of views & regularly invites figures across the political spectrum to write for us. Press freedom is guaranteed under the Basic Law, security law, Bill of Rights and Chinese constitution. Opinion pieces aim to point out errors or defects in the government, law or policies, or aim to suggest ideas or alterations via legal means without an intention of hatred, discontent or hostility against the authorities or other communities.
