On the eve of the Federal Government's proposed major overhaul of the country's child support system, we ask: Who should pay for the children? Helen Dalley reports on the current state of the system for divorced families and the Howard government's plans for the future.

Under the planned reforms divorced fathers will be able to earn a second income without having to pay an increased amount of child support. The new strategy is designed to make the system fairer - as of now, whoever has the kids most of the time - whether it's Mum or Dad - gets the money.

As one parent put it: "Our children at the present time are being prostituted. We have a dollar value on their heads." Shaking up child support is an emotional and financial minefield, that is bound to result in casualties ...

Transcript of Sunday program

GRAHAM: It is just hard when you can't provide for your children. It is a daily stress. You don't sleep, I am down below 70 kilos, just stressed so much because I don't know where my next dollar's coming from.

NARRATOR: Painting their portraits is the closest Graham says he gets with his three children these days. Since they live in a different town, several hours drive away, Graham says he can't always afford the petrol to go and see them.

GRAHAM: I feel that I am a failure because I can't provide for them. If I had the money, I would give them everything - as far as I see, it is for my children.

NARRATOR: At 42, currently unemployed, while recovering from major back surgery, Graham claims to be struggling to stay afloat and keep up his fatherly duty to see his kids and his financial obligation to support them.

GRAHAM: I would love to pay child support because my kids benefit in the end, it's not me. I get satisfaction knowing my kids have got shoes and they are doing well at school and they don't have to worry about whether dad's got money.

NARRATOR: Graham claims he's trapped in the Child Support Scheme and its collection agency, known as the CSA, and he can't escape its stranglehold. He says he's happy to pay child support, but believes the current system ignores the harsh reality of his fluctuating income.

GRAHAM: It doesn't matter what I do, it isn't good enough. I can try my guts out, it's still isn't good enough, and it wouldn't matter I dropped dead tomorrow, they would still be collecting on me. So, they want their money and they have got it in their head that I could be earning this much and whether I have got it or not they want it.

NARRATOR: Now remarried and supported by his new wife, Graham says when he was working he paid child support, but when unemployed, he's deemed capable of still earning, and the agency says he must pay up. When he can't, his child support debt continues to mount up.

GRAHAM: I understood I had no debt outstanding. I rang up for a final tally of what I owed - they said it was $700 and then I was cleared with them. Once I did that and put my tax return in, they reassessed it and then did a calculation of the past three years, or something, they said, and it worked out that I owed them another $3,500.

NARRATOR: Graham says the agency made the mistake, but took all his tax return. What's more, he says on another occasion, when his $40,000-a-year wage almost halved, he was still assessed for child support at the old, higher wage rate.

GRAHAM: I got my week's wages, my fortnight's wages, and found out that my net pay was $80 out of $600 or something I was due to receive. I rang up my pay department, said "What's happened?" and they said, "Child support have garnished your wages "and they've told us they're taking this much out." So, they didn't have a say in it, and it went. It turned out that it didn't even leave me enough to get to work, let alone pay rent or anything.

RAY LENTON, DADS IN DISTRESS: I've been there, sat in a bed looking out the window crying all night, wondering what I was going to do the next day. Dead from Monday to Thursday, alive again on Friday to be only dead again on Monday morning when I take my kids home.

NARRATOR: Fathers activist groups like Dads in Distress see daily the toll family breakdown takes on non-custodial, called non-resident parents, who are mostly fathers. According to these men's groups, many dads feel disadvantaged and frustrated by their child support obligations.

TONY MILLER, DADS IN DISTRESS: Dads are struggling out there to pay their child support to survive again and get on with their lives again. It is a tough road and all that we are looking at is getting a fairness back into the system. No-one is saying that they shouldn't pay their child support - we all agree they should.

GRAHAM: They are looking at the bottom line. They see a figure and that is what they are going to collect. They don't care about your circumstances, they don't care what your emotional state, and what your job circumstances - none of that - because they believe they are acting on the child's best behalf and I am some bad ogre who is hoarding all my money and I have a pot of gold out the back that I am not letting them have.

BARRY WILLIAMS, LONE FATHERS ASSOCIATION: I don't think there is any bloke out there that don't want to pay a reasonable amount for his child, but he wants to pay a decent amount, not an amount that leaves him living in a life of poverty.

NARRATOR: But fighting to stay out of poverty is exactly what Katrina says she has to do every day.

KATRINA: It's horrible. I mean the children go without so much, you know, basics, they don't go out.

NARRATOR: Mums like Katrina, whose four primary school age children live with her, are on the other side of this battlefield. Unemployed while studying, on sole parent welfare and paying private rent for their modest home, Katrina says the family struggles to make ends meet. So you budget to within every cent?

KATRINA: Yes, I do.

HELEN DALLEY: Is there much left over at the end of the week?

KATRINA: Most weeks, yes, there might be $2 or $3 left. They don't go to movies, they wouldn't know what going to a movie was like, we don't have takeaway, we don't do anything special, because, yeah, we're living basically on the poverty line.

NARRATOR: She claims the children's father, who now has no contact with them, works, but hides his income to avoid supporting his kids.

KATRINA: I don't receive anything at all, he refuses to pay. He thinks the money is going to me, not to the children.

HELEN DALLEY: Why do you think he refuses to pay?

KATRINA: Because if he paid I'd be able to buy a Lexus. He thinks I would be rich if he paid child support. I spend nothing on myself. Except on my Internet connection - that's it, and that's for my study. I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't go out and I certainly don't get spousal maintenance. NARRATOR: When they split, her ex had a job and she received two monthly child support payments of $800. Then he lost that job and was reassessed by the CSA as capable of paying, although just the barest minimum.

KATRINA: $21.67 a month for all the children.

HELEN DALLEY: So how much was that a week?

KATRINA: Less than $5.

HELEN DALLEY: For all four children?

KATRINA: Yes. I think it's about 71 cents a day.

HELEN DALLEY: And how did you regard that?

KATRINA: It's an insult, it's an insult to the children.

NARRATOR: While $21 a month for four young children can hardly be called child support, Katrina got even less when his second wife and child left him.

KATRINA: Then the $21 was split between five children and it was reduced to $17 a month for my four children.

HELEN DALLEY: The $17 a month that you're supposed to get for four children - have you seen any of that?

KATRINA: Not a cent.

KAY HULL, COALITION MP AND PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE CHAIR: Family, society as we know it today is breaking down, partnerships are breaking down, children are being without their fathers and their mothers and there was a real need to look at, if we're going to continue this separation process, divorce process, how do we look after our children in the ensuing years.

NARRATOR: Coalition MP Kay Hull chaired last year's emotionally charged parliamentary inquiry into custody and child support post-divorce. While custody issues dominated the committee's final report, there was such a deluge of complaints about the child support system the politicians flicked that contentious issue to a task force to come up with a plan to overhaul child support.

JOHN HOWARD, PRIME MINISTER: There is a level of concern and unhappiness with the operation of matters relating to the custody of children following marriage breakdown.

NARRATOR: That plan - set to be released this week - will no doubt please some and anger others, but in the end it's unlikely to resolve the bitterness and disputes at the heart of paying for your children after the marriage dissolves.

KATHLEEN SWINBOURNE, SOLE PARENT UNION: It is about supporting children and one of the rationales underlining the scheme is that it is your responsibility to support your children. Child support says you are responsible for supporting your own.

NARRATOR: But Kay Hull's committee found examples of genuine struggle, but also clear-cut avoidance.

KAY HULL: We also heard of those people who are self employed, who minimise their income to such a degree that they just significantly to avoid child support or paying for their children. There are those as well who would go to the end of the earth not to pay child support, who'll put everything in a new partner's name and will not pay for their children.

NARRATOR: Then there's this admission from the fathers groups.

TONY MILLER: Certainly there are a percentage of dads that don't pay.

BARRY WILLIAMS: It's mainly the business people who can minimise their payments to pay less child support.

HELEN DALLEY: So you agree that does happen?

BARRY WILLIAMS: Of course it happens.

HELEN DALLEY: So what do we have to do to make it fairer, to make those parents pay for their children?

BARRY WILLIAMS: Well, there has to be laws to come down on them.

NARRATOR: When Maria's husband left his family, their seventh child was just 6 weeks old, their eldest only 11.

MARIA: I feel very frustrated. I feel that we are trapped within the system in that people can go on to make another family and disregard the responsibilities for the previous one.

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