The federal government has responded to the parliamentary inquiry into financial abuse, supporting or supporting in principle 58 of its 61 recommendations. The inquiry’s report was released in December 2024. The response took until October 2026. It’s the clearest acknowledgement yet that banks, government agencies and the family law system can be turned against a woman by the person she lives with. It is also, for now, a document. The woman walking into a bank branch this week, or opening a letter from Services Australia, is dealing with the system as it still is.
I’ve spent a long time looking at that system. As a finance journalist, and as a child of divorce who watched the gap open between what my mother had afterwards and what my father had. Women’s Divorce Academy exists because the divorce disadvantage is real, it’s structural, and the women on the wrong side of it rarely know it’s coming. The stories the inquiry heard are the reason I keep doing this work. They’re also the reason it still makes me furious.
Key takeaways
Financial abuse is any behaviour that controls or limits a person’s access to money and economic resources. About one in six Australian women has experienced it in a relationship.
The parliamentary inquiry into financial abuse, chaired by Senator Deborah O’Neill, heard how banks, super, joint debts and child support can all be used as instruments of control.
The government supports, or supports in principle, 58 of the inquiry’s 61 recommendations. Implementation is still ahead.
Financial abuse often continues, and sometimes escalates, after separation.
Support is available now through 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) and the National Debt Helpline (1800 007 007).
What is financial abuse?
Financial abuse, also called economic abuse, is behaviour that controls or limits a person’s access to money, assets or the ability to earn, causing harm or fear. The Australian Bureau of Statistics describes it plainly: interfering with bank accounts, running up debt on shared accounts, and delaying property or child support payments after a relationship ends all count.
The ABS Personal Safety Survey found 16 per cent of Australian women, around 1.6 million, have experienced economic abuse from a partner. For men, the figure is 7.8 per cent.
It rarely announces itself. Rebecca Glenn, chief executive of the Centre for Women’s Economic Safety, has said economic abuse often goes under the radar because the focus during a violent relationship has to be on immediate physical safety. Her point is the one I keep coming back to: if you don’t have economic safety, you don’t have safety.
What the inquiry heard
These stories come from ABC reporting on the inquiry and on financial abuse more broadly. None of them involves an exotic loophole. Each one runs through a system most of us use every week.
Shenane: $56,000 of debt she didn’t know she had
Shenane Hogg, a proud Torres Strait and South Sea Islander woman, woke from a nine-month induced coma in 2017 after an assault by her then-partner. He was jailed. She woke to a brain injury, no home, and $56,000 of debt her partner had run up while she was in the coma.
The financial abuse had started long before the violence though. She had a well-paid council job; he worked on and off. First she paid for everything. Then she was lending money to his family. Then he took her key card, and asking for it back meant slammed doors and intimidation. There were times she couldn’t buy toiletries or food on her own salary.
He had encouraged her to apply for three credit cards. After the relationship ended, she found out he’d run them up to about $56,000. For around two years she lived on $48 a fortnight while she repaid it. Dealing with the banks, she said, mostly meant being told to pay it, and pay it now.
Lily: the bank saw the hardship arrangement and said nothing
Lily, a Melbourne healthcare worker, told the ABC her former partner controlled her finances from early in the relationship. She believes her bank could have recognised her distress, or flagged concerns when her ex left a financial hardship arrangement. Years on: “I’m still in survival mode.”
Linda: a decade of letters
Linda’s wages were demanded for a shared account and her name was left off the house deed. After she left, he stopped paying the mortgage and she received weekly letters demanding payment. About ten years later she’s in casual work and describes managing the ongoing abuse as her full-time job.
Kirsty: bankruptcy, then an emptied account
Kirsty, a single mother in regional South Australia, left in 2012. Her former partner had taken out loans in joint names to cover his debts and withdrawn money so she couldn’t buy food. She kept paying the joint mortgage for six months after leaving, until a financial counsellor told her he had declared bankruptcy. Because the debts were in both names, she had to as well. Her first home owners grant was lost in the process. After she left, he convinced a bank he could access her account and emptied it of her first Centrelink payments.
Chloe: told to pay child support to the man who owes her $15,000
This story was published by the ABC this week, and it shows the gap between a government response and a changed system. Chloe (not her real name), a Canberra mother who left to escape family violence, has both children living with her. Her ex-husband owes her more than $15,000 in unpaid child support. From this month, Services Australia has told her she must pay child support to him.
About seven months after she disputed his reported income, Services Australia calculated his taxable income at over $300,000. His latest estimate puts it below $20,000. Several family law firms couldn’t act for her because he had already contacted them. The family home was sold by the bank after the mortgage went unpaid, and she slept in her car while the proceeds sat in lawyers’ trust accounts.
Dr Amira Aftab of Macquarie Law School says the child support scheme is built on an assumption that separated parents will cooperate. Amy Kilpatrick, chief executive of Care Financial and Consumer Law Centre, says the reforms announced so far don’t sever the financial link between perpetrator and survivor.
This is a pattern, not isolated cases
Chloe’s experience matches what I found when I investigated Services Australia’s child support “crackdown” for Women’s Agenda in July. Crystal Paduch, who spent 12 years inside the agency and now helps parents navigate it, told me staff are measured on how much they recover and how many payment arrangements they secure. A compliant parent with savings is an easier target than an ex who hides income across companies, trusts and other people’s accounts. One mother I spoke to was ordered to pay a $17,000 lump sum from her savings after a second appeal overturned a tribunal ruling in her favour. Another is owed more than $95,000 by an ex the agency has thrown its hands up and concluded it cannot recover from.
I’ve been through the assessment process myself. After a decade of separation and an informal arrangement that broke down, I claimed child support last year. My caseworker suggested I accept my ex’s claim that I earn more than I do. “You’ll only lose $6000 a year,” she said.
I’m not sure how much Services Australia is paying their staff but if they think losing $6000 a year without any factual basis is negligible, they’re doing better than me.
The gap between “support in principle” and a branch counter
A woman I know told me recently about going to a bank that publicly positions itself as safe for women experiencing financial abuse. She didn’t want to make a booking. A booking meant a record, and a record was a risk if her husband found it.
They insisted. So she booked, and she asked them not to send any reminders. They agreed.
The reminder arrived in their joint email address. He saw it. He asked what she was going to the bank for.
Nothing about that bank’s policy was wrong on paper. The failure was the standard of training that meant one staff member, one default setting, one email could potentially put this woman in danger.
That is where financial abuse lives: in the ordinary processes that assume a household is safe. A recommendation accepted in Canberra doesn’t reach that bank counter until the bank properly trains its staff.
What the government has agreed to
The inquiry made 61 recommendations covering banks, superannuation, joint debts, the Privacy Act, consumer protection, and government agencies including Services Australia. The government supports or supports in principle 58 of them. The Australian Banking Association has its own industry guideline on financial abuse, and banks reported intercepting more than half a million abusive transactions between 2020 and 2022, many of them threats typed into the description field of one- and two-cent transfers.
Those are real steps. They’re also recent, uneven and incomplete. Support in principle is not a changed process, a retrained call centre or a child support assessment that accounts for violence.
Why I keep doing this
The pattern across every one of these stories is the same: she found out too late. Shenane found the debt after the coma (which I find it impossible to write without following it with WTAF‽). Kirsty found the bankruptcy from a financial counsellor six months after she’d left. Linda found out what being left off the deed meant when the letters started.
I know that pattern from the inside. In my first year of separation I received no financial support and didn’t see a lawyer because I believed I couldn’t afford one. It was a false economy, and it cost me and my children. That’s the disadvantage: not one dramatic loss, but a series of things you didn’t know to ask about, decided while you were busy surviving.
Women’s Divorce Academy is my attempt to close that gap before it opens. Information isn’t a cure for abuse. But a woman who knows what joint debt means, what a hardship arrangement is, what a child support assessment can and can’t do, and that a financial counsellor is free, is harder to trap.
What this means if you’re separating now
I’m not a lawyer or a financial counsellor, and nothing here is legal or financial advice. What these women’s experiences highlight:
Joint debts stay joint after separation unless they’re formally dealt with. Kirsty kept paying a mortgage on a home she’d left.
Income can be easily under-reported. Chloe’s ex went from an assessed income of over $300,000 to an estimate under $20,000.
Any shared email, phone or account can carry information you didn’t intend to share.
A financial counsellor is free, confidential and often the first person to see the full picture.
If any of this feels like you right now, 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) is available 24 hours a day. The National Debt Helpline is 1800 007 007. In an emergency, call 000.
And if you’re separating and want to understand your position before decisions get made for you, learn more about how Women’s Divorce Academy supports women through divorce.
Frequently asked questions
Is financial abuse a form of domestic violence?
Yes. Economic abuse is recognised in Australia as a form of family and domestic violence, and the ABS now measures it separately in the Personal Safety Survey.
Does financial abuse stop when you leave?
Often it doesn’t. The Centre for Women’s Economic Safety says economic abuse frequently escalates after a relationship ends, through unpaid mortgages, delayed property settlements and the child support system.
What did the financial abuse inquiry recommend?
The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services made 61 recommendations on how banks, super funds, government agencies and the law can better identify and prevent financial abuse. The government supports or supports in principle 58 of them.
Who can I talk to about financial abuse?
1800RESPECT (1800 737 732) for confidential counselling, and the National Debt Helpline (1800 007 007) for a free financial counsellor.
