FOI letters seeking suicide statistics from Child Support Agency, The Australian, 4 December, 2002.

FOI letters seeking suicide statistics from Child Support Agency, The Australian, 4 December, 2002.

The link between the harassment of separated parents by the government and their high rates of suicide remains a scandal to this day.

Once upon a time the CSA refused to attend the inquests of separated fathers, even those where the link was blindingly obvious, such as dying with CSA letters in their hands or other such obvious links.

Now, as I understand it, the CSA attends these inquests and then seeks that the proceedings be held in camera, thereby continuing to attempt to conceal the consequences of their program.

This operation was conducted with the FOI officer David McKinnon.

The aim of the exercise was to prove whether or not the claim by the men's groups that three men were dying as a result of the operations of the CSA could be verified.

The CSA did everything they could not to answer the questions, including claiming they did not collect the data and that they were under no legislative obligation to do so.

In other words, the Agency which had as its motto "Helping Parents Manage Their Responsibility" could not be bothered to count their own dead.

In the end, when the policy people kept insisting that they did not keep the statistics, McKinnon went to their data people.

At the time, 12 parents a day were dying, a percentage more than double what you would expect in the broader divorce-aged bracket population.

The government has never acknowledged their culpability in these deaths and has done all it can to cover them up.