Finance Minister Katy Gallagher says single parenting payments ‘saved me’

An MP has shared her own emotional pregnancy battle as she reveals why single parenting payments ‘saved her’.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher has refused to confirm changes to welfare for single parents but says the payments saved her life when she was a young mother.

Single parents with older children hoping to receive more generous government benefits have been on tenterhooks waiting to find out whether the measure will feature in next month’s federal budget.

Australians receiving this payment, who are predominantly women, are shifted to the less generous Jobseeker payment when their youngest child turns eight-years-old and lose about $100 a week as a result.

Senator Gallagher touched on her own emotional story in an interview on ABC Radio on Thursday when she was asked about the government’s reported plans to lift the cut-off age for children of parents receiving the payments from eight to 14-years-old.

The Labor frontbencher, who became a single mother after her fiance died when she was just 27-years-old and pregnant, said she recognised how life-changing the single parenting payment was.

“I did live on that payment, it changed my life. It saved me,” she said.

“It gave me the support I needed to get myself together to look after my baby and to get back into work. So, I 100 per cent understand the importance of these payments. They are life-changing and so important,” she said.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher has weighed in on the upcoming federal budget. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

Senator Gallagher wouldn’t lock in an exact new cut-off age for the payments, saying the government would announce its position closer to the federal budget’s release on May 9.

“There are various views. There’s those that say you have to go back to 16. There’s those that will say that 12 is the place to land, which is when childcare benefits and some of the other payments end,” she said.

Two panels of experts commissioned by the government — the Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce and the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee — have both called to raise the children’s cut-off age to 16 in recent reports.

Senator Gallagher said on Thursday it would be impossible to include all of their recommendations in a single budget and even in one term of parliament.

The single parenting payment cut-off age was reduced to eight-years-old when the Labor government led by Julia Gillard made the controversial decision to cut the welfare payments in 2012.

Single parents are waiting to see if they will be eligible for more generous government benefits for longer. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Geraghty

The Gillard government switched off the grandfathering arrangement Liberal prime minister John Howard had put into place in July 2006.

The Howard government had stopped parents claiming the parenting payment when their youngest child turned eight.

But the grandfathering arrangement allowed those who were already receiving the payment in July 2006 to remain on the payment until their youngest turned 16.

Labor’s decision shifted more than 80,000 people on parenting payments to the lower Newstart unemployment payment, now known as Jobseeker.

The decision reportedly saved taxpayers $728m over four years but its critics say thousands of single mothers were plunged into poverty as a result.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said earlier this week Labor was “deadly serious” about fixing gendered economic inequality.

Originally published as Finance Minister Katy Gallagher says single parenting payments ‘saved me’