Child support
In her "Family Law and Child Support Policy Directions", released on September 18, Pauline Hanson criticises the present system of child support paid to the custodial parent (usually the woman) after the break up of the children's parents.
She implies that separated women are living in luxury with their children, while men must live in poverty to support them.
This has become a prominent issue for Hanson, who, being a consistent right-wing populist, is responding to that section of the "men's rights movement" lamenting the supposed inequality between men's and women's financial responsibility for their children after a marriage break up.
Hanson asserts that "[the present system of child support] is based on a myth that children should be able to enjoy the same standard of living when parents are separated as they did when the family was functionally intact". She is, in effect, calling for the punishment of women and their children for the break up of relationships.
Hanson has the support not only of the men's rights movement, but also Sydney Morning Herald columnist Bettina Arndt, among others, whose anti-feminist diatribes are as predictable as Howard's current use of the word "plan".
In her many articles in various establishment publications, Arndt has shown she is a great defender of "men's rights", at the expense of women's. When John Howard further restricted eligibility for the Parenting Allowance earlier this year, Arndt criticised him for not going far enough, saying that he had "wimped out" by not making "sweeping reforms of the system" in favour of fathers.
Whereas the Howard government's main agenda is to reduce the costs to the state of welfare payments, (which also explains its policy initiatives to push women back into the home, where they can do welfare work unpaid), Hanson's focus is more openly anti-feminist. She too advocates cutting government welfare payments to all of those "bludgers" out there, but she is also advocating fathers' "right" not to pay for child support.
Hanson asserts that women are getting "special treatment", at the expense of men, just as Aborigines are getting special treatment at the expense of the "rest of us".
In fact, sole mother households are disproportionately represented among the poorest Australians and, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, only 59% of sole parents receive child support from the non-custodial parent.
It is true that working-class men are suffering the effects of the capitalist austerity drive. Many are paid grossly inadequate wages and do find child support payments difficult to make. Many men have no wage at all, yet are obliged by the state to pay child support from their dole.
But it is not women who are to blame for these difficulties. The blame lies with big business and its government's drive to boost private profits at the expense of working people's wages and living conditions.
All members of society should be guaranteed a standard of living which is much greater than that experienced by the majority today. No person — married or not, a parent or not — should have to make up the gap between a government allowance and a living wage.
For so long as the state is not taking that responsibility, however, we must ensure that all children's welfare is guaranteed to the greatest extent possible, and that this responsibility is assumed by both parents, in proportion to their ability to pay.
Men must take financial responsibility for their children's welfare and, at this stage, the Family Court, although not infallible, is best equipped to make these judgements.
By Margaret Allum