Single Parents Payments Cut From Over 100,000 People

More than 100,000 single parent families might be feeling a slightly tightened budget belt soon in new measures going before the parliament.

They’ll miss out on a fortnightly tax benefit of about $100 after their youngest child is turns 13.

The changes are a part of more ‘budget-friendly’ legislation that was unveiled yesterday, but not everyone is on board.

Senator Rachel Siewart from the Australian Greens said that her party understood that changing teenagers was expensive.

“It’s when growing teens are raiding the fridge, growing, becoming more invested in hobbies and school supplies can get costly.”

Certainly it seems to us, as it does to many, that this payment seems to be exactly the opposites of what parents need, particularly single parents already struggling to support the many expenses of children and teenagers in a modern world.

Not only that, but these changes represent yet more changes to the already complicated Family Tax Benefit that already has many parents scratching their heads. It seems that the government can’t quite figure out what to do in order to balance what works for the budget, and what families need to get by.

The Department of Social Services told the Senate estimates hearing that it was anticipated around 136,000 single parents and 76,000 couples would be involved in the cut. At the same time, around 1.2 million families will receive an extra $10 a fortnight under other changes to Family Tax Benefit Part A.

In a real world situation a single parent with two teenage children aged between 13 – 15 will be short $54 a fortnight under the changes. However, the parents that have been cut off from Family Tax Benefit Part B will get a $1000 supplement to their payments. Although this might seem like a smart move on the part of families, this payment is actually much less than they would have received before, which was around $2,737.

We hope that in the coming days and weeks we’ll be able to bring you more information on the changes and who is going to be affected. In the meantime you can also get in touch with Centrelink to check if your family might be at risk of losing the payment.