Media Release
Wednesday 19 April, 2006
Pay your child support before you get to the departure lounge
The General Manager of the Child Support Agency (CSA), Matt Miller, is warning parents with child support debts to pay up before heading overseas.
"In 2004-05, 482 parents with a child support debt paid around $2.8m before heading overseas thanks to CSA issuing Departure Prohibition Orders (DPO)."
"A DPO provides authority to the Australian Federal Police to stop paying parents at the airport from leaving the country because they have outstanding debt owing to their child(ren)," said Mr Miller.
"Some serious avoiders of child support think they can get away with not paying by sometimes leaving the country."
When all other avenues to collect the outstanding child support have been ignored, CSA will issue a DPO where the parent with the arrears is travelling overseas.
"If they have money for overseas travel, they can at least make arrangements to settle their outstanding child support debts," Mr Miller said.
"Many parents with debts are unhappy about being stopped at the airport but we make no apologies for putting the interests of children before a parent's inconvenience. Serious avoiders are warned-pay up before you pack your bags.
"The Government has given CSA more funding to substantially increase and improve the use of DPOs and we plan to quadruple the number issued in 2006-2007."
Case study: A lawyer who claimed to be long term unemployed moved overseas to PNG and obtained work in a high income position. At that time CSA was not able to recover debt from a payers living in PNG. Last year CSA contacted the parent who is a frequent traveller to Australia and explained how DPOs work; the parent has cleared their debt of almost $90,000.
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email: media@csa.gov.au
