Budget hope lifts for single mothers

Welfare groups are still anticipating the budget will include measures to help single mothers despite the government’s reluctance to support a big hike in the rate of JobSeeker.

Single Mother Families Australia chief executive Terese Edwards.

There is a growing expectation among welfare groups that the federal government will move in the budget to support single mothers by increasing eligibility limits for the Parenting Payment and boosting commonwealth rent assistance.

While they are disappointed Treasurer Jim Chalmers moved quickly to play down the prospects of significantly bolstering the JobSeeker payment – a key recommendation of two government advisory groups this week – there is optimism a number of other proposals will be acted on.

One is changing the rules around eligibility for the Parenting Payment (Single), which currently stops the day the youngest child of a single parent, overwhelmingly mothers, turns eight, and the payment reverts to the lower JobSeeker benefit, a loss of about $100 a week.

Advocacy groups are calling for it to return to the previous threshold of 16.

The other is an increase to the rate of Commonwealth Rent Assistance, which they say would help women, including many in vulnerable situations, secure affordable and safe housing.

The Parenting Payment reform was the first of six priorities for urgent action in the May 9 budget proposed to government by the Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce, led by business leader Sam Mostyn.

The change to rent assistance is recommended by WEET and another advisory group, the Interim Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee, which provided 37 proposals in its pre-budget report including the call for a 40 per cent lift to the rate of JobSeeker.

While the JobSeeker proposal, worth an additional $24bn over the forward estimates, was effectively scotched as too expensive in the current budgetary climate, advocacy groups noted the silence on the parenting payment and rent assistance proposals.

“It was a disappointing response to JobSeeker, but I take that as an indication that some other recommendations such as the Parenting Payment and Commonwealth Rent Assistance changes are still under strong consideration,” Single Mother Families Australia chief executive Terese Edwards said.

“You can imagine what that ($100 a week) means to a household; it can actually mean taking the kids to sport, putting food in the shopping trolley and not having to be skipping meals, it can mean putting petrol in the car, those really practical aspects.”

Anti-Poverty Week executive director Toni Wren said those two reforms, together with increasing JobSeeker, were vital to Anthony Albanese delivering on his commitment that no one should be left behind or held back.

Australian Council of Social Service chief executive Cassandra Goldie, one of 14 members of the IEIAC, said the nation needed a “substantial increase to Jobseeker, to youth allowance and those critical income support allowance” to about 90 per cent of the pension rate.

Besides changes to the Parenting Payment and Commonwealth Rental Assistance, the WEET advice to Women’s Minister Katy Gallagher canvassed abolishing the Childcare Subsidy Activity test for parents, paying superannuation to primary carers while they are on parental leave, cutting the ParentsNext support program and paying childhood educators more.

Ms Mostyn said: “This budget represents the moment for the government to confirm the premises that were made last year in the women’s budget statement.

“The six recommendations were determined by the taskforce as the most urgent reforms and investments that could be made to instil confidence in Australia’s women that economic equality is now within their grasps.”