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Letters to the Editor
US child-support agency not a contender I REFER to your article "Tough agency to target parents" (CT, November 4) in which Frank Cassidy reported that the Child Support Agency (CSA) could face competition from a United States debt-collection agency, Child Support Intervention (CSI), and that this had the imprimatur of the Australian Government. The report is fanciful in the extreme. How could anyone take seriously an organisation that boasts, "We would kidnap children to get them back..." and that promotes a "Bill of No Rights", suggesting that non-custodial parents have no right to happiness? Unlike parents in the US, where the collection of child support has proven difficult, Australian parents can feel proud of their record in supporting their children after separation. Forty-three per cent of more than one million parents pay child support privately; $1.3 billion in child support was transferred between parents in 1998-99; and 90 per cent of all liabilities raised since 1989 have been collected. There is also no truth in the reported comment that the Autralian Government supports the entry of CSI into the Australian market. CATHY ARGALL
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