If President Trump follows through on his campaign promise, new mothers may soon have six weeks of guaranteed paid leave. But something is keeping them from using the benefits they already have.
No wonder the Tories can’t look poor people in the eye.
EPA/Andy Rain
After months of speculation, we now know how the Chancellor plans to save £12bn from the welfare budget.
Social Services Minister Scott Morrison announces that a A$3.5 billion child-care subsidy will begin from July 1 2017 if the Senate passes previously rejected Family Tax Benefit savings.
AAP/Paul Miller
Lost in the political debate about subsidising child care is the fact that universal free preschool care has been abandoned as a goal of good social policy.
Ed Balls or Margaret Thatcher? It’s sometimes hard to tell.
Peter Byrne/PA Wire/Press Association Images
Ed Balls has kicked off the annual Labour conference in Manchester with an ill-judged announcement that his party would increase child benefits by just 1% a year until 2017 if elected to government next…
Iain Duncan Smith: hardship, despair, and destitution.
Anthony Devlin/PA
On July 5, the Daily Mail mounted yet another attack on the pesky human rights folk who have the temerity to question the coalition government’s welfare agenda. The article, headlined “The Brazil Nut strikes…
Has Hockey provided a map for future sustainability?
AAP/Alan Porritt
The children of this country owe a debt of gratitude to Malcolm Wicks, who died last year. If you have ever benefited from child benefit, you have him to thank. While Wicks was dying he wrote a memoir…
Even on sale, payday loans are getting us into more financial trouble.
PA
Britain is currently experiencing its longest and deepest economic slump in a century. But through new research we’re only just beginning to realise quite how dramatic the impact of this recession has…
Regrets may lie ahead in the switch to the universal credit.
Karl Ludwig G Poggemann
The introduction of the universal credit will change the face of benefit and welfare services for families all over the country. By making assumptions about digital literacy levels, the government is putting…
Single parents are being left to their own devices.
Flickr/stephanski
In most countries children in lone parent families are at increased risk of experiencing poverty. In 2011, the proportion of lone parents below the poverty line in EU countries reached 33.5%, compared…
No more Baby Bonus: Labor has further tightened family payments to rein in expenditure, but the danger is low-income families will feel it most.
AAP
When it comes to welfare spending in the budget, the federal government has given with one hand and taken with another. Funding for support of disability services (NDIS) and schools the (Gonski reforms…
A single lump payment and the ability to pool family income should replace the current complicated family tax benefit system.
Flickr/ajusticenetwork
Two changes are needed to the taxation and family benefits system to improve efficiency and achieve equity between families. The first step is to replace the current complicated family tax benefit payment…