The Child Support Scheme: Failures of the first decade

This article focuses upon the first ten years of implementation of the Australian Child Support Scheme. It investigates the philosophy and social ideology which underpin the Scheme and questions whether the objectives of the Scheme are being achieved. The central thesis is that the ideology of the Scheme needs to be fundamentally altered in order to properly cater for financial support of children of separated families.

The article suggests that the amendments put forward by the recent Joint Select Committee investigation into the Child Support Scheme will not ameliorate the deficiencies in the Scheme as they do not go to the pivotal core of what a child support scheme is created to do. The article describes how the ideologies inherent in the Scheme might be altered in order to create a system of child support which would cater for all system users.