Vikki Campion: Until we fix child support system, stories like the Pattersons’ will persist

No financial domestic dispute justifies triple murder – but pretending Erin Patterson’s motive is a mystery ignores reality, writes Vikki Campion.

She premeditated a cold-blooded killing in a form that fascinated the world, yet the question after all the global hype is still, why? Was it $38 a month?

In murdering her former husband’s parents, Don and Gail Patterson, his aunt Heather Wilkinson, and attempting to murder Ian Wilkinson, his uncle, Erin Patterson became an example of the frustration of a broken child support system that exacerbates, rather than ameliorates, conflict.

We must start acknowledging the systemic failures of the child-support system in Australia. Court testimony and messages revealed her frustration over child support after estranged husband Simon Patterson declared himself separated on his tax return, meaning the ATO withheld her family tax supplement until she sought child support.

She had given her husband a house, $800,000 in cash, and huge interest-free loans to his siblings yet, she claimed, he wouldn’t even cover their son’s anaesthetic bill.

A Melbourne mural of mushroom cook murderer Erin Patterson with ‘Guilty’ now scrawled across it. Picture: NewsWire/Nadir Kinani

When Services Australia did the maths, her ex was ordered to pay $38 a month, a sum Erin found insulting given her expectations, including private school education.

This case isn’t just about Erin, it’s a symptom of a broken child-support system that fuels conflict.

This is how they work it out.

They take dad’s whole pay and mum’s whole pay and put them in one bucket and minus out what it theoretically takes for a child to live, and then split that over the nights mum and dad have with the child and then over the number of children you have together.

The current formula considers only taxable income, ignoring assets such as a paid-off house or government payments like rent assistance.

This equation means the Erins of the world, who received a $2m inheritance, get $38 child support paid by their children’s dad for two kids a month.

Simon Patterson, the estranged husband of Erin Patterson. Picture: Martin Keep/AFP

This is also how average male earners on about $140,000 with kids the same age as Erin’s, who have 50 per cent care, end up paying their ex $400 a fortnight, while covering all the school and medical bills, while their ex pays no rent or mortgage, and takes home a single-parent pension even though each parent has the children for the same amount of nights.

This discrepancy then increases again between pay-as-you-go workers, whose child support can be quickly garnished, and self-employed people, who stall on tax returns, meaning the mother of their children watches the $20,000 child-support debt owed to them increase each month on the Services Australia app.

Seeing documents from dads getting screwed and mums getting nothing, it can be hard to believe all these case studies are in the same country governed by the same rules.

Child support is split over the nights mum and dad have with the child and then over the number of children they have together.

There are financial incentives for the “resident parent” to limit the children’s contact with the “non-resident parent” because child support increases with the less face time they get.

Other parts make no sense. A dad pays the same child support whether they see their child 29 per cent of the time or not at all.

For parents like these, who feel short-changed, whether it’s a mother getting only $38 a month or fathers paying hundreds fortnightly while not being able to see their children, the system exacerbates resentment and conflict.

The biggest issue for most fathers is they want to see their children, and the biggest issue for mothers is they don’t want to be destitute because their ex has rearranged their affairs in such a form that it appears they earn no money.

Frustration builds into anger and anger builds into hate.

The political will to make tough decisions in this fraught arena is nowhere to be found.

Federally, politicians have danced from inquiry to report to report to taskforce, and still nothing seems to be changing in any significant way any time soon.

If the murder weapon was a machete not a mushroom, the motive would be crystal clear to everyone. Picture: Sarah Matray

No financial domestic dispute justifies triple murder. But pretending Erin’s motive is a mystery ignores reality.

Nobody in the domestic-violence space wants to admit female perpetrators of DV exist, and their motives, whether money, control or revenge, are as clear as those of men.

If she answered to dad and not mum, and the murder weapon was a machete not a mushroom, the motive would be crystal clear to everyone; it was better for her to punish her ex and take the lot than continue to negotiate for some.

Yet we have the podcasts, psychologists and women’s organisations that would be organising public marches if this were a male perpetrator instead mystifying her violence and refusing to acknowledge the systemic failures that amplify this conflict every day.

Until we fix the system, stories like the Pattersons’ will persist, with different weapons but the same motives.

There was no worse outcome for their children than the one their mother chose.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN A COUNCIL FINDS OUT TRUE COST OF NET ZERO

Federal and state Labor can learn from the Labor-led Port Stephens Council, which voted this week to scrap Net Zero.

While PM Anthony Albanese was offsetting on a flight to China, and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen was island-hopping around the Pacific trying to win the COP31 host job, the council at the centre of a federal offshore wind zone that lumps wind turbines in humpback whales’ migration paths was quietly unpicking its Net Zero plans.

Port Stephens Council discovered the cost of Net Zero was too high. Picture: Ander Gillenea/AFP

Australia should be doing what Port Stephens unwittingly did. First, it put a dollar figure on what they were doing, an estimated cost of $500,000 paid every year “to achieve carbon neutrality”.

A report found “council’s commitment to achieving carbon neutrality for council operations by 2025 is an ambitious target that requires ongoing funding to pay for carbon offsets with no clear benefit to the organisation”.

Sadly, there was no fanfare. No media release. Because the mayor will be drafting a rescission motion to take us back to the Net Zero fantasy once its Labor councillors find their way back to the chamber. It’s taken local independent councillors such as Mark Watson to look at their balance sheet and think, what if we put that $500,000 into our roads, or local environment?

This could be the start of an epiphany and inspiration for every council.

By supporting Net Zero, Port Stephens is supporting the desecration of its biggest tourism attraction, the whale migration path that’s just off the coast. They still can’t explain why pods of whales beach themselves, so how can they claim that this massive industrialisation of their migration path will have no impact?

No doubt, when the council resumes, it will be back to debating closing its pools in winter and monitoring how its staff get to work to continue splashing big on its Net Zero fantasy.

LIFTER

NT Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro declaring the days of Territory cops being a taxi service are over, making serious offences ineligible for youth diversion.

LEANER

Smart Energy Council chief executive John Grimes’s hot take on China as “team players”. Would Uyghur slaves stolen from their families use that term?

Originally published as Vikki Campion: Until we fix child support system, stories like the Pattersons’ will persist