Peter Dunne

Wellington, Sept 3 NZPA - Plans to overhaul rules around child support have been welcomed by single parents and child advocates.

Revenue Minister Peter Dunne yesterday released a discussion document, Supporting Children, outlining wide-ranging proposals to overhaul the system under which child support is administered and seeking to make it easier and fairer for parents.

Mr Dunne said there were plans to make it fairer for absent parents who pay significant financial support while still having active involvement in looking after their children, and less harsh for those falling behind in payments.

He said the current scheme was introduced 18 years ago, but nowadays both parents were more likely to be working and often separated fathers had a greater role caring for children.

Parents owe about $2 billion but only about $600,000 of that is unpaid child care payments while the rest is accumulated penalties.

Compulsory deductions from wages, a reduction in penalties for those genuinely attempting to pay and amnesties and write-offs for special circumstances were among the options on the table.

"An important part of getting the scheme right will be creating a situation where paying parents are more likely to comply with their obligations voluntarily," Mr Dunne said.

Chief Families Commissioner Carl Davidson said he wanted to see payments going directly to the carer parent and not through IRD, as overseas experience showed people were more happy to pay when government departments were by-passed.

Every Child Counts spokeswoman Deborah Morris-Travers said after 18 years of social change the review was welcome.

"There is plenty of anecdotal evidence that suggests (the system) is no longer working in the best interests of the children involved," she said.

Twenty one percent of households were now single-parent with dependent children and they were affected -- for better or worse -- by how well the child support system worked.

A couple of single parents spoken to by NZPA said it was pleasing to see changes were in the pipeline as the current system was fraught with downfalls.

"The system is designed to hit bad people -- it tends to hit everyone who tries to be good," one father said. He said there was no leniency applied to situations where he had the children for long spells.

A mother said her partner consistently got away with skipping support payments, despite earning over $100,000 a year