Family Law Act amendment: 

Pre-CSA the family court used inequitable property settlements as a way of partly providing for the children. Welfare *entitlements* (as per law) were taken into account when making maintenance orders so regular maintenance was often a top-up of welfare payments. 

In addition to this newly liberated women, wanting to be truly free from the shackles of patriarchal oppression, did not seek maintenance orders. 

Divorce rates soared following the introduction of no fault divorce and the welfare system reeled under the load. (My research has not yet uncovered the extent this extra welfare burden was forseen by the clowns in Canberra)

To ease the load on the public purse the government amended the Family Law Act so the court could not take eligibilty for welfare into account when deciding an amount of maintenance. The court was also required to quantify amounts of property settlement transferred as maintenance for DSS income testing purposes.

However the family court was still bound by law to make fair and equitable maintenance orders so maintenance payments remained at a reasonable level.
 

Child Support Act 1988: Stage 1 

Child support, being small weekly amounts, was difficult to enforce on a regular timely basis. Stage one of the child support scheme established a public debt collection agency to collect court ordered child support and distribute the money through DSS. 

A civilised society would have stopped here, But not our beloved control freaks in Canberra. This is the point where "scheme" became a "scam". The fact the government did not outsource CSA to private debt collectors when everything else was being privatised hints at the true motive of the government.

The CSA was set up as a branch of the ATO. A child maintenance order, once registered with the CSA, was converted from a civil debt due to the payee into tax due to the Commonwealth.

The explanatory notes to the Child Support Bill explain the "this is not a tax" clause is simply to make CS offences subject to lesser penalties than required under the taxation administration act. 

Thus WEL got what they wanted. Support for "independent" women direct from the government, not male "opressors". 
 

Social Security Amendment 1988: 

Not satisfied with ensuring that maintenance was paid on a timely basis, the government sought to profiteer from their devious circumvention of the judicial process. 

The Social Security Act was amended so that maintenance was treated separately from earned income. A "maintenance free area" was set at $15 a week. Any maintenance over that amount reduced welfare handouts by 50c in the dollar.

This meshed with WEL's agenda that women receiving maintenance should not be deterred from joining the workforce. Women working PT enjoyed 2 income thresholds before losing welfare. 

However women whose only non-welfare income was maintenance found their exempt amount reduced from $40 a week to $15 a week so they were worse off, unless large amounts of maintenance were being collected. 
 

Child Support Scam: Stage 2 

The final stage in subverting the judiciary was to establish "the formula", a tax of a fixed percentage of gross income.

The presumption had shifted so that not only was it unreasonable to expect custodial parents to go to court to have a court order enforced (which per se is a fair premise in the circumstance), it was now unreasonable to expect people to go to court to get a determination of their entitlements and responsibilities.

After all, child support was now being paid by the government. Why shouldn't the government set the amount?

The formula was quick, simple, cheap to administer, and free of the bothersome obligation of being "fair and equitable" which so burdened the judiciary.

To create an illusion of fairness and equity the Child Support Review Office was established. This is a kangaroo court with the tax commissioner as chief judge, and illegal judicial powers delegated to lawyers.

And so we have it. The judiciary was cut out of the loop and civil liability was socialised into the tax/welfare beaurocracy.