The Albanese government remains committed to the $250bn stage-three tax cuts but cannot say whether it will lift the rate of the unemployment payment, despite its own expert committee finding it was now “a barrier to paid work”.
Speaking to ABC’s Insiders on Sunday the finance minister, Katy Gallagher, said the government was reviewing the findings of the economic inclusion committee and the women’s economic equality taskforce, but could not commit to accepting any of the recommendations.
The chief executive of the Australian Council of Social Service, Dr Cassandra Goldie, said it would be “unconscionable and grossly irresponsible” for the government to condemn more than a million people to poverty on jobseeker while sticking with the tax cuts.
“Increasing jobseeker to 90% of the pension rate could be funded by reversing just a third of the stage-three tax cuts and would profoundly change the lives of people who are being hit the hardest by the cost of living crisis,” Goldie said, adding it was “what a responsible government would do”.
Gallagher told the ABC that the government didn’t “set up these taskforces to then not seriously consider the recommendations that they come forward with.
“The budget will look to do as much as it can within the responsible fiscal environment that we are in, to deal with addressing disadvantage and inequality where we can,” she said.
“We want to ensure that within the environment we’re in where we’ve got a range of pressures coming at us and those pressures are increasing over the longer term, not decreasing, that we’re doing what we can to address women’s equality, but also address disadvantage and poverty where we can.”
However support for the stage-three tax cuts, which are legislated to begin next July, remains iron clad, with Gallagher repeating the talking point that the government’s position “remains unchanged”.
“Are they the right balance? Well, our position is those tax cuts are legislated and we haven’t changed our position. My job as finance minister is to ensure quality spending, to make some of those difficult decisions and there are difficult decisions,” she said.
“I don’t want to pretend to anybody that these are easy decisions. They are difficult. But how do we get that balance right? How do we address disadvantage? How do we support those that are most vulnerable? How do we provide cost-of-living relief within the context of the environment we’re in?”
The women’s economic equality taskforce recommended the government reverse a Gillard government decision to move single parents from the parenting payment to the unemployment payment when their youngest child turned eight. The difference is about $250 a fortnight. There are suggestions the government is considering raising the age threshold to 12. It had previously been 16.
Goldie said the single parent proposal was important, but would only help “about 85,000 single parents of the more than 1 million who are destitute on jobseeker and youth allowance” and that was only if the age threshold was 16.
“If government only does the single parent measure, as important as it is, they will leave almost a million other people behind on jobseeker and youth allowance – about half are over 45 and most of them are women, others have cancer or episodic mental illness or other disability that isn’t sufficient for them to qualify for the [Disability Support Pension] these days but significant enough that they can’t work full-time,” Goldie said.
“Young people struggling with chronic anxiety and students struggling to think clearly enough to complete their eduction.
“I’ve never seen it this bad nor the level of deprivation, mental anguish and sense of hopelessness amongst people affected.”
The budget will be handed down on 9 May.
