Voters favour tax breaks, childcare subsidies for working women over JobSeeker raise

Tax breaks and childcare subsidies to encourage more women with children to return to work have the backing of Australians over other initiatives such as increasing the JobSeeker payment.

A new survey, conducted by Resolve Strategic for this masthead, shows 61 per cent of respondents either support or strongly support an increase to incentives for women with children to return to work with policies such as tax breaks or childcare subsidies.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has been working on policies to boost female representation in the workforce heading into the budget.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

This compares to 42 per cent who support an increase in the JobSeeker rate for unemployed people in the budget, and 33 per cent supporting an increase in funding for cultural and arts institutions such as the National Gallery and National Library.

The Albanese government has ruled out raising JobSeeker in this year’s budget.

Treasury secretary Stephen Kennedy earlier this month raised the alarm on the high financial penalties faced by women and those on welfare who want to work an extra day.

Under current tax settings, it doesn’t make financial sense for many women with children to work more than three days a week. This is because, if they receive a family tax benefit and childcare subsidies, they will be penalised by their male partner’s income for every extra hour they work.

The government has been considering removing barriers which hinder mothers working more hours in the week, on top of its $4.5 billion, four-year promise to increase childcare subsidies for families starting on July 1.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the budget would contain a suite of measure that would help families while delivering a dividend for the economy.

“Empowering more women to work more if they want to is a really important part of the Albanese government’s economic plan,” he said.

“The focus of the budget will be targeted cost-of-living relief that doesn’t add to inflation, laying the foundations for future growth in our economy and making our economy as resilient as it can be to global shocks,” he said.

Government sources confirmed that the May 9 budget will contain new incentives to encourage women with children to return to work. It is unclear whether this will include removing tax barriers to women working more hours.

The opposition’s treasury spokesman Angus Taylor said the Coalition was committed to supporting women’s workforce participation but any new measures would need to be considered in the full context of the budget.

“While more women in work is good for participation and good for the economy, any new measures will need to be considered in the full context of the budget,” he said.

Taylor said the Coalition does not support increasing the rate of JobSeeker “particularly when Australian job vacancies are at near record highs”.

”More spending with high inflation will mean families will pay for new spending twice, once on their tax and again in their mortgage payments,” he said.

The official women’s economic equality taskforce and an independent economic inclusion advisory committee have urged the government to scrap the ParentsNext program, abolish the childcare subsidy activity test and increase Commonwealth rent assistance.

The economic inclusion committee, which the government established last year to provide budget advice to address disadvantage, also said the JobSeeker rate was “seriously inadequate” for more than one million unemployed people and should rise to 90 per cent of the aged care pension.

But the government is being forced to deal with the competing needs of reining in the debt and deficit and providing people with cost-of-living relief.

The new polling shows that 59 per cent of respondents support an increase in the corporate tax rate, and 58 per cent back an increase in the tax on profits in the resources sector, as a way of addressing the debt and deficit.

Only 34 per cent support cancelling or scaling back the legislated stage three tax cuts, which come into effect next year and will disproportionately benefit the wealthy, and 44 per cent want a reduction in tax concessions on investment properties such as clamping down on negative gearing.

Forty per cent of respondents favoured reducing spending to end deficits earlier, 14 per cent said current spending levels should be maintained with increased taxes and 28 per cent said spending levels should be maintained while living with the debt and deficits for now.

People are still pessimistic about the outlook on the economy, with only six per cent believing it will get better in the next month and 45 per cent saying it will get worse.

Resolve Strategic director Jim Reed said voters were expecting the government to do more with less “because that’s what they are doing at home”.

“They are looking for measures that will hold the greatest benefit for them or benefit the greatest number of people and will cast a critical eye over new taxes or spending,” he said.

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