The Albanese government has kept open the option of taking up the opposition’s proposal to increase the hours jobseekers can work before losing their payments.
The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, declined to rule out adopting the idea, saying the government was “always looking for ways to make it easier for people to participate in work”.
The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has withheld support for the government’s $40 a fortnight increase in the jobseeker rate.
In his budget reply speech on Thursday, Dutton instead called for social security recipients to be able to earn more before payments are reduced.
Chalmers said on Sunday that the government had “a substantial agenda when it comes to workforce participation”.
He signalled it would consider proposals as part of an employment white paper that is due to be released later this year.
“Getting more people into work was already a central feature of our economic plan before Peter Dutton started scratching around for something to say in budget week,” Chalmers told the ABC’s Insiders program.
“We’re looking at the workforce more broadly in the context of the employment white paper and all the policies we have already put in place so people can work more and earn more and provide for their loved ones.”
The social services minister, Amanda Rishworth, dismissed Dutton’s proposal as “just a thought bubble with no substantive analysis behind it”.
This framing does not rule out the possibility of the government taking up a similar idea once officials have worked on the details.
Rishworth argued Dutton’s proposal could have “unintended consequences”, but said the government was using the employment white paper process to examine “a whole range of scenarios and analysis”.
“We will continue to work through that process in a rigorous way,” she told Sky News.
The shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor, said some of Rishworth’s criticisms were “just rot”.
“You would expect that from a government that doesn’t seem to be focused on the things that are really going to help all Australians to put downward pressure on inflation, getting people into work” he told Sky News.
“The analysis is simple: over 430,000 job vacancies … if there was ever an opportunity to get people into work it’s now.”
Taylor said the opposition wanted to work with the government on implementing the proposal, but Labor must “put away their ideological prejudices”.
The government has defended Tuesday’s budget against what the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, described as “a great contradiction” of criticism that, on the one hand, it didn’t offer enough cost-of-living relief and on the other that it might increase inflation.
In addition to the jobseeker increase and a lift to commonwealth rent assistance, the budget included help for energy bills and incentives for GPs to lift bulk-billing rates.
On Sunday Chalmers repeated the government’s call for the Senate to pass the government’s housing future fund legislation, saying it was “time to end the political games”.
The treasurer also reiterated the government had not changed its position on the stage-three tax cuts, due to take effect next year.
Chalmers said rethinking the stage-three tax cuts had not been “a priority in the context of these budget deliberations because we found other ways to make meaningful changes in the budget, help people through difficult times and invest in their future”.
