EDITORIAL: Deadbeat dads burden for all of us

LOUIS PIERARD
Fathers who evade paying child support - especially those in high earning jobs - stand accused of more than neglecting their families. They show contempt for fellow New Zealanders who are forced to step into the breach to pay to raise the children for them.
Figures released by the Inland Revenue Department show that 387 well-heeled "deadbeat dads", with declared incomes of $100,000 or more, owe a total of $6.3 million in child support. National welfare spokeswoman Judith Collins believes the figure is actually worse because many of those fathers are minimising their incomes (such as squirreling away income in trusts) to cheat and hurt their estranged families.
It is welfare fraud - nothing less - and it is scandalous that such a huge debt appears to be tolerated, or at least, that there are few signs that it is being addressed.
Fathers do it because they can. Depressingly, increasing numbers are untroubled by their consciences when they neglect their offspring. Many appear not to acknowledge that paternal duties extend beyond conception.
There was a time when the consequences of such selfishness would have been unforgivably cruel for their families. Nowdays the taxpayer picks up the tab. It would be inhumane not to.
However, that is all it takes for some dads to shirk their responsibilities; it is too easy for it to become someone else's problem. And if they can inflict more misery and hardship on their former partners at the same time, well, that's even better. Not only is the charity of New Zealand taxpayers being abused but we are enlisted by one party to spite another.
Instead of assisting families, big, friendly, all-embracing state handouts are actually harming them. And matters are not likely to improve.
If no one is to blame and no one has to answer for the consequences, why would anyone bother to make the effort when all are there to take the rap? Our finger-wagging forebears would have reminded us of the sour fruits of folly with the judgment "you have made your bed and so must lie in it"; today that bed is so well-feathered it scarcely makes the slightest difference.
It is a feature of laissez welfare that cheats will exploit it wherever they can, wrecking the integrity of such support and insulting those who fund it. Of 65,000 parents asked to pay just $14 a week towards the upkeep of their children, Miss Collins reports, 44,000 are failing to do so. Why?
In the dock along with the cheating, deadbeat dads - who ought to be named and shamed for parental dereliction - should also be those who administer the collection of child support so poorly that, by omission, they openly promote theft.