One Nation has today said they intend to vote against the government's reforms to the child support system in a disgraceful move that would leave children in poverty and loopholes for family, domestic and sexual violence open.

For too long, the child support system has been possible to manipulate to cause harm to children and parents. This has left too many children without the financial support they need.

There is almost $2 billion of unpaid child support in this country. There are almost 100,000 parents and carers in the child support system who have experienced or are at risk of experiencing family and domestic violence. Australian children deserve better.

The legislation before the parliament is our first tranche of legislation to fix that by making it easier for kids to get the support they are owed and stopping perpetrators using the child support system to abuse an ex.

The Bill will close loopholes and stop people using processes in the system to:

• harass their former partners and tie them up in lengthy processes that go nowhere
• lock them into unfair debts in the social security system by manipulating child support payments, and
• obtain documents with personal information about them, including where they currently live and work, which can create physical safety risks.
• It is absolutely disgraceful One Nation has decided to vote against this.

Of course, this is nothing new for One Nation. It was Senator Hanson who said: “go after the child support. A lot of people see it as a cash cow” and labelled domestic violence a “two-way street”.

I encourage the Parliament to support the Bill for the thousands of children and families relying on it.