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The Child Support Agency (CSA) is responsible for the majority of male suicide in Australia, newspaper stories indicate.

Suicide Victim “hounded” over child support

By DANIELLE CRONIN

Sporting shooters' club committees. faced lines of up to $2000 if they failed to provide information about a member's gun collection and its value to the Child Support Agency, a letter given to The Canberra Times revealed.

A Victorian sporting shooters' club received the CSA letter, which demanded a members residential and postal addresses, telephone numbers and details about his gun collection within 14 days, Or the club could face a line.

Australian Council for Civil Liberties secretary Cameron Murphy said the case demonstrated the need for national privacy laws.

And local shooters believed it was an "absolute farce",' Sporting, Shooters' Association of Australia ACT branch junior vice president Wayne Brown said.

A CSA spokeswoman said the agency's role was to ensure all Australian parents met their child­ support responsibilities.  "In practice. CSA works actively with both parents following separation to encourage them to meet their responsibilities voluntarily and with minimal government intervention." she said.

It does this because this approach is best for parents and children.

"Some parents do not meet. their responsibilities and when this happens. CSA has an obligation to collect the payments." the CSA spokeswoman said.

Mr Brown said parents should financially support their children but believed CSA's "quite threatening" approach would discourage people from joining clubs and transform community organisations. into government debt collection agencies.

"We don't want to get involved  we're an apolitical, social club." he said.

The sporting shooters' ACT branch with more than 2000 members  did not keep lists of its members' gun collections, and Mr Brown said gun valuations were subjective because they could not account for the sentimental value of family heirlooms.

Mr Murphy said it was a "dangerous situation" which impinged on a person's right to privacy.

Clubs should inform prospective members that their details could be passed on to government agencies and should not sell membership lists to private companies without a member's consent.

"Unless a club is lawfully required to hand over the information it shouldn't," he said.

The CSA spokeswoman said most parents supported their children after separation with little intervention on the agency's part. action is usually a last resort after repeated attempts to reach agreement on payment arrangements have failed" she said.

"Australian parents lead the world in meeting their child support responsibilities.

"Before the Child Support Scheme was introduced and the Child Support Agency established less than 30 percent of parents were paving or receiving child support and our social welfare system picked up the tab.  Today, the evidence confirms CSA’s success  over one million parents use CSA, 70 percent of parents pay regularly: 45 percent of parents registered with CSA choose to collect privately, almost 90 percent of child support liabilities have been paid and about $1.4 billion is now transferred between parents each year."

MONDAY NOVEMBER 27 2000