Much has been written about the need for the child support system to be "fair" and that its cornerstone is the "best interest of the child". Examining these principles against the Australian system's current-day operation was the broad objective of this research project.

Over the past ten years, the Australian Institute of Family Studies has conducted several large-scale studies involving nationally representative samples of separated parents. This paper highlights the findings relating to parenting arrangements after separation.

This report finds the Welfare to Work policy is not only failing to help single mothers find employment, it is increasing their financial insecurity and eroding their attempts to find work and become self-reliant.

Despite families being much smaller, parents being older, mothers being better educated and having much higher employment rates, child poverty has risen significantly since the 1960s. In 1961, 95 percent of children were born to married couples; by 2015 the proportion had fallen to 53 percent. For Maori, 72 percent of births were to married...

Labor Opposition Leader Bill Shorten claims the 2016 federal budget will boost the take-home pay of millionaires while cutting payments for working mums, arguing that a mother earning $65,000 with two kids at high school would lose more than $4,500 in gov