The federal government is considering an across-the-board audit of social support payment systems to identify whether they are putting people at risk, as the commissioner monitoring its national anti-violence plan warns they are being “weaponised” against women.
Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner Micaela Cronin suggested on Wednesday that the government was reviewing all of its payment systems out of concern that they were being used to punish current and former intimate partners.
“I am aware that work is under way to do the kind of audit across work and across government systems, to make sure that government is thinking about how those things can be worked, can [be] and are causing harm,” Cronin said. “So we will be keeping an eye on that.”
Government sources later clarified that an overall review is being considered but has not been actioned.
However, social services minister Amanda Rishworth confirmed work is under way to examine the real-world impact of the child support system specifically.
“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,” Rishworth told Guardian Australia in a written statement.
The move comes after the government-appointed Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee, chaired by former Labor minister Jenny Macklin, warned in two consecutive annual reports that the way the child support system interacts with the payment of family tax benefits was putting single parents – most of whom are women – at risk.
The Macklin committee’s report noted that single parents must actively seek child-support payments from their ex-partner to avoid losing part of their family tax benefit (FTB) payments. While there were exemptions for those at risk of violence, the definition of violence was too narrow for many to qualify. It also found that some malicious ex-partners manipulated the amounts and timing of their child support payments to ensure FTB claimants were penalised.
Addressing the National Press Club about her first annual report on progress in implementing the national plan to end violence against women, commissioner Cronin acknowledged some people manipulated public and private-sector systems to cause harm.
“We know that systems are weaponised,” Cronin said. “Systems are weaponised to harm people, and all of our systems can be weaponised. We know child support security payments are weaponised. We know the family court is weaponised. The child protection system is weaponised against women and children.”
Minister Rishworth said changes to the social services system from July last year helped strengthen Service Australia’s powers to collect debts from parents who had not paid child support and improve the income accuracy for low-income claimants to prevent future debts. She said as a result of an inquiry into family law, the government also invested $1.5 million over five years to “build the evidence base” for longer term improvements.
“Family and domestic violence is unacceptable in any form,” Rishworth said. “While most people do the right thing, some people deliberately avoid paying or minimise their child support to inflict financial control and abuse on their former partners. We also know that in some circumstances the child support system is used as a means of continued financial control and abuse after people have left abusive partners, which results in sustained trauma for victim-survivors.”
She said the government was committed to ensuring separated parents and their children “receive the support they are entitled to, and that government systems do not exacerbate any abuse”.
Reporting on progress under the government’s plan to eradicate gender-based violence within a generation, Micaela Cronin said 43 women had died in the past financial year at the hands of partners or former partners, with the risk dramatically higher for Indigenous women. She also acknowledged the specific risk to women with disabilities.
Cronin said prevention and protection models needed to have “eyes on men” rather than focusing only on a woman’s vulnerability.
“We talk about, how do we help manage women’s risk and safety? We don’t do risk assessments in the same way about men and their behaviour.”
Cronin’s report said more support was needed for men who became concerned about their own behaviour.
“Unless we start doing that, we’re not keeping women safe,” she said. “If the objective is to keep women and children safe, then we need to be doing the work with men more than we have.”
One of her key concerns was the rise in misogynistic behaviour among young men.
“I think it is deeply concerning,” she said. “I think that we are seeing evidence of radicalisation of young people and young men in particular.”
Cronin said research shows young Australian men’s attitudes towards women’s rights were alarming.
“We are leading in a bad way, in some ways, in the world,” she said. “It’s something we absolutely need to be paying attention to.”
Her report also says frontline support services for women need more and different funding and that the government must prioritise improving data collection, warning it was difficult to review progress under the national plan when key data was only collected every four to five years.