KEY POINTS:
The level of unpaid child support in New Zealand is nothing short of a national disgrace. The latest figures show the total is $1.1 billion. To get an idea of the magnitude you need only compare it to the equivalent figure for Australia, which is $1 billion, $100
million less despite having five times our population.
Clearly something is seriously wrong and needs to be fixed. It is therefore welcome news that Revenue Minister Peter Dunne aims to do just that.
As reported in the Weekend Herald, he is planning a bill this year which will give Inland Revenue access to customs declarations by international travellers. The intention is to track down child support defaulters who have skipped the country and then to collect the money owed when they return or to use reciprocal arrangements with other states to catch up with them.
This is not a bad tactic to tackle this immense problem, given that parents in Australia owe 33 per cent of the outstanding debt. Indeed, it is reasonable to ask what took the Government so long. It is astonishing that in the past it has, in Mr Dunne's words, "relied on essentially individual honesty for people to tell us when they are leaving the country".
The Dunne proposals are a great improvement on this easygoing approach. And they fit in well with moves last year to allow Inland Revenue to write off some of the penalty payments - which account for three-fifths of the child-support debt - of parents who agree to meet their obligations.
And yet Mr Dunne's measures do not go far enough; they are a classic case of addressing the symptoms rather than the causes. The extent of the problem is so great that it suggests something must be amiss with the system, making New Zealanders more reluctant to pay up than their counterparts across the Tasman.
One possible explanation is that some parents object to paying child support when sharing care with the custodial parent. Obviously such an imbalance has great potential to undermine faith in the system and lead to resistance.
Mr Dunne is also looking at new rules on how much should be paid in such cases, but he is reluctant to address what is arguably a more important underlying cause, namely that in New Zealand a significant proportion of child support goes to defray the cost of the domestic purposes benefit, rather than directly to the custodial parent.
It is not hard to see how the paying parents would rationalise their position and say, "Why should I be forced to contribute to Government coffers in this way? It's not fair."
There is a certain force in such logic which is supported by the national figures. Just $151 million of the $341 million collected in child support in New Zealand goes to the custodial parents. The greater part, $190 million, goes to the Government to offset the cost of the DPB.
Contrast this to Australia, where the full amount of child support goes to the custodial parents, even though their benefit is reduced accordingly.
The numbers point to a conclusion that suggests the Australian system has a better record, at least in part, because paying parents have more faith in it and are therefore less likely to avoid meeting their responsibilities.
Mr Dunne acknowledges that this aspect of the problem has been looked at for years in New Zealand, but says there are more pressing issues.
No doubt the measures he has outlined are necessary and welcome. But the results would be so much better if the Government came to grips with the underlying reasons why some parents are so reluctant to pay in the first place.