THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18, 1987. Issues in dispute

Press, 18 March 1987, Page 20

THE PRESS WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18, 1987. Issues in dispute

The Government’s “tougher line” on the payment of child maintenance embraces the sort of sentiment that will have most people nodding in agreement. The Minister of Social Welfare, Mrs Hercus, says that “too many” parents have been evading their responsibilities towards the support of their children who are in the care of the other nartners. So much has been known for years; the problem has defied several offered solutions. The doubt that attaches itself to Mrs Hercus’s announcement is not over the need to find a remedy, but whether the new policy is really a practical answer, or only window-dressing.

The central feature of the new policy is a revised formula for charging non-custodial parents. This contribution goes to the department to help defray the cost of providing domestic purposes benefits to solo parents. The present maximum contribution that can be asked of a liable parent is $5O. Under the new formula, the parent will be required to pay 20 per cent of before-tax income, after deducting the equivalent of the single adult social security benefit rate (or the married couple benefit rate if the liable parent is in a second marriage). The formula will apply up to a maximum contribution of $B3 a week for the first child and $l6 each for any other children.

On the surface, this looks pretty good; it certainly would seem that liable parents are going to be required to meet a more realistic share of the cost of supporting their children. A contribution of, say, $99 a week is closer to the real cost of supporting two dependent children than $5O; but there are flaws. Under the formula, before a parent liable for two children can be asked for the $99 maximum contribution, he or she would have to be earning more that $620 a week. Liable

parents who are also beneficiaries, and liable parents earning less than $3BO a week, will still be paying less than the old maximum. The new policy, then, has less to do with the cost of supporting children than with extracting as much as possible from people on higher incomes. There might have been some form of rough justice in this if lowincome earners and beneficiaries did not have children, or if family numbers grew in a direct relationship to bigger pay packets. Experience shows that the reality about family size and income brackets tends to the reverse.

The biggest failing of the new policy, though, has also been the stumbling block of all previous “solutions”; this is the lack of any practicable means of enforcement. If people are not paying maintenance, what recourse does the department have? Imposing fines is not practicable, since people who do not pay maintenance are not likely to be all that fussy about paying fines; imprisonment would prevent the liable parent from earning and so defeat the purpose of maintenance orders. The department can attach the wages of a liable parent — but it has had this power for years now and still, in the Minister’s words, “too many liable parents are evading their responsibilities.” Flight overseas is no longer the complete escape it once was for a parent evading maintenance; but it still poses a formidable barrier for the department when it attempts to collect. By attacking the wealthier liable parents in the way it has, the Government has increased the incentive for wealthier parents — those whose money makes it easier for them to move overseas — to consider temporary migration. The “tougher line” might prove to be a nice phrase and little more.