Extract from The Guardian
Senior official confirms that the government raised the stalled
family tax benefit cuts in discussions with crossbench on extra auto
industry assistance
Labor Senator Kim Carr inspects Toyota’€™s new hydrogen fuel cell
vehicle, the Mirai, outside parliament. Carr says linking the family
benefit cuts with extra assistance for the car industry is a ‘blackmail
proposition’.
Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP
A senior public servant has confirmed the government raised its plan
for cuts to low income family payments at a meeting with crossbench
senators about extra assistance for the car industry – a link the Labor party says amounts to “a blackmail proposition”.
Treasurer Scott Morrison has been in negotiation for several months with the crossbench about the new package cutting $4.8bn from family benefits, unveiled this week. Guardian Australia revealed Friday that innovation minister, Christopher Pyne, had told crossbench senators at a private meeting the government would only provide up to $200mn extra assistance for the car industry if the family benefit cuts passed the Senate.
Peter Chesworth, a division head with Pyne’s department of innovation and industry told senate estimates he had been in the meeting last week about car industry assistance and that the issue of cuts to family tax benefits “was raised” although he “couldn’t comment on the conditionality aspect.”
Labor senator Kim Carr said he regarded linking the family benefit cuts with extra assistance for the car industry as being a “blackmail proposition”.
New figures show that single parents who earn less than $100,000 a year and have teenage children make up the biggest group of losers under new cuts, which the federal government is describing as being like a game of “snakes and ladders”.
The new cuts, which save the budget $4.8bn over four years, remove family tax benefits worth $2,737 a year from single income families when their youngest turns 13 and reduces the payment to $1,000 for sole parents of teenagers and grandparents caring for teenagers.
The human services minister, Christian Porter, says the aim is to try to get single parents and stay at home parents back into the workforce.
Senate estimates heard the changes to the family tax benefit B payments – available to families earning up to $100,000 – would hit 136,000 single parents in the first year, as well as 76,000 single income couples and 3,900 grandparent carers.
The same families will also lose around $900 per child in end of year benefits.
Porter said the cuts were like the “snakes” in a game of snakes and ladders – with the small increase in general family payments and the proposed $3.5bn childcare package being the “ladders”.
That childcare package – announced in the 2015 budget but not yet legislated and scheduled to come into effect in 2017 – gives higher benefits right up the income scale, paying 85% of childcare costs for families earning up to $65,000 and 50% for those earning over $170,000. These payments are uncapped until family income reaches $185,000 and then the proposed cap is higher than the one that applies now - rising to $10,000 per child from $7,500.
“In the measures that we have put before parliament there are snakes and there are ladders but there are a lot of ladders in the package,” Porter told Sky news.
“We’re not saving as much as the first iteration of this package and that’s because we are giving a lot back to people. But, ultimately, the package is about trying to devise ways to increase female workforce participation amongst mums, single mothers, mothers in couple families,” he said.
“When your child turns thirteen, having had the benefit of a childcare package up to that point, you should be moving back into greater workforce participation.”
The new package replaces 2014 budget measures that had been stalled in the Senate, which would have saved $8.5bn according to the parliamentary budget office.
It remains unclear whether the government will get the new package through the senate.
Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie says she is unlikely to vote for it. Senators Glenn Lazarus, Dio Wang, John Madigan, Ricky Muir, Bob Day and Nick Xenophon are all undecided. Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm supports the changes.
Treasurer Scott Morrison has been in negotiation for several months with the crossbench about the new package cutting $4.8bn from family benefits, unveiled this week. Guardian Australia revealed Friday that innovation minister, Christopher Pyne, had told crossbench senators at a private meeting the government would only provide up to $200mn extra assistance for the car industry if the family benefit cuts passed the Senate.
Peter Chesworth, a division head with Pyne’s department of innovation and industry told senate estimates he had been in the meeting last week about car industry assistance and that the issue of cuts to family tax benefits “was raised” although he “couldn’t comment on the conditionality aspect.”
Labor senator Kim Carr said he regarded linking the family benefit cuts with extra assistance for the car industry as being a “blackmail proposition”.
New figures show that single parents who earn less than $100,000 a year and have teenage children make up the biggest group of losers under new cuts, which the federal government is describing as being like a game of “snakes and ladders”.
The new cuts, which save the budget $4.8bn over four years, remove family tax benefits worth $2,737 a year from single income families when their youngest turns 13 and reduces the payment to $1,000 for sole parents of teenagers and grandparents caring for teenagers.
The human services minister, Christian Porter, says the aim is to try to get single parents and stay at home parents back into the workforce.
Senate estimates heard the changes to the family tax benefit B payments – available to families earning up to $100,000 – would hit 136,000 single parents in the first year, as well as 76,000 single income couples and 3,900 grandparent carers.
The same families will also lose around $900 per child in end of year benefits.
Porter said the cuts were like the “snakes” in a game of snakes and ladders – with the small increase in general family payments and the proposed $3.5bn childcare package being the “ladders”.
That childcare package – announced in the 2015 budget but not yet legislated and scheduled to come into effect in 2017 – gives higher benefits right up the income scale, paying 85% of childcare costs for families earning up to $65,000 and 50% for those earning over $170,000. These payments are uncapped until family income reaches $185,000 and then the proposed cap is higher than the one that applies now - rising to $10,000 per child from $7,500.
“In the measures that we have put before parliament there are snakes and there are ladders but there are a lot of ladders in the package,” Porter told Sky news.
“We’re not saving as much as the first iteration of this package and that’s because we are giving a lot back to people. But, ultimately, the package is about trying to devise ways to increase female workforce participation amongst mums, single mothers, mothers in couple families,” he said.
“When your child turns thirteen, having had the benefit of a childcare package up to that point, you should be moving back into greater workforce participation.”
The new package replaces 2014 budget measures that had been stalled in the Senate, which would have saved $8.5bn according to the parliamentary budget office.
It remains unclear whether the government will get the new package through the senate.
Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie says she is unlikely to vote for it. Senators Glenn Lazarus, Dio Wang, John Madigan, Ricky Muir, Bob Day and Nick Xenophon are all undecided. Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm supports the changes.
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