"Inland Revenue TV advert could be type of child abuse"
by Susan St John and Vivienne Adair
The latest advertisement from the Department of Inland Revenue about child support is, itself, a form of abuse. While the official justification emphasises the need to make all separated parents financially responsible for their children, it may be also judged to exploit the pain of children for ideologically-inspired ends.
While often neither parent in a separated family is on a benefit, the majority of child support orders are for children in this situation. So it is easy for the public to assume that the child at the centre of the latest ad is in a sole parent family. Previous ads in the distasteful series from the Department of Social Welfare have, after all, been about people on benefits.
Viewers are expected to believe that the child misses out on the soccer lesson because the liable parent is not paying what is due in child support. Taxpayers who fund the DPB are, no doubt, expected to be outraged. The father (he is usually the liable parent who pays child support) has failed and hurt the child. Thus the ad provides more 'evidence' of the deviant behaviour that is widely believed to be associated with the DPB.
Pitying looks from the other kids are highlighted as the child slinks away, excluded from participation in sport that should be his unalienable New Zealand birthright. It tugs at the heartstrings and is enough to make most caring New Zealanders' stomachs churn.
But hold it right there. How many New Zealanders viewing this know that even if this child's father pays a bit more child support it will not make one jot of difference to the child's soccer lessons? If the caregiver parent is on the DPB, any child support payment from the father is collected by the Inland Revenue Department, and goes to offset the costs of the caregiver's DPB. It is not available for soccer lessons, or for that matter anything extra for the child at all.
Worse still, not all liable parents have good jobs with reasonable pay. Even those on the meagre benefit of the community wage must contribute. These support payments can often impoverish the liable parent. After paying child support he may not have the few extra dollars to pay directly for the soccer, or anything else for the child.
Janet Lake, a former social worker at the City Mission, describes how many of her clients on the single rate of the Unemployment Benefit couldn't afford to eat if they had the $10 child support deducted. And they certainly couldn't afford to have their children for a weekend.
Think again about the impact of this advertisement. It is being played at times when the soccer-playing more-fortunate traditional-family children are watching TV. The message is clear. If the child in the ad cannot join in the normal activities other children enjoy, it is because they are too poor and from 'not a proper' family. Sensitising children and the wider community to what is really causing these situations this way can only serve to further humiliate the children from struggling sole parent households.
And then there is the insensitivity portrayed by the coach, and/or the school. The bystander/peer apathy that we see in school bullying cases is reinforced by this ad. A government professing an interest in social responsibility, might surely encourage children to support others and show some empathy. A better lesson would have been to have the child who saw the ostracism, confront the coach about his lack of sensitivity. An offer of a half time changeover to share the game might have served as a role model to other kids to not just stand back and passively accept an adult approach to ignoring other's hurt.
There are genuine inequities that arise under the Act when wealthy liable parents avoid their responsibilities by hiding income, or when step parents and their new families are affected by large child support orders for children of former liaisons. Child Poverty Action does not condone the avoidance of parental responsibility. But previous reviews of the Child Support Act have been impotent to address its real, complex problems. At very least, changes are needed so that some of the child support paid always makes the child better off instead of being swallowed up in the state's coffers.
The lack of progress on the underlying problems with the Act is no excuse for turning away from rational debate on these issues to the use of emotive material on television. This medium can powerfully mould public attitudes. It is especially important not to mould them in ways that foster social division rather than inclusion. Moreover the issue that the ad has highlighted, the fact that some children are not able to participate because of a lack of income needs much broader analysis. The question the ad poses: "Who pays if you don't?" should be aimed at the government, New Zealanders generally (both those with and without children), employers, as well as non-custodial parents.
Susan St John, spokesperson for Child Poverty Action and Vivienne Adair, Director of the Child and Family Policy Research Centre, University of Auckland.
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