CarnivalAskew

Why should wealthy mothers be able to stay home and get welfare payments when poor single mothers have to go out and work for as little as $3 per hour?
Labour MP

I heard this on the radio today. I didn't manage to catch the name of the particular Labour MP.

Or maybe he could have should have said, 'Why should the average worker in Australia get paid $42000.00 when the average urban worker in China gets paid the equivalent of AUD$2000.00 a year?'¹

Or maybe he could have should have said, 'Why should the average human being walk around on two legs when there are people who have to move around with no legs in a wheelchair?'

By making the income of 'poor, single, mothers' the standard against which all mothers' incomes are measured' this MP begs the question:Why is it acceptable for government parliamentarians to refer to 'poor, single mothers who have to go out and work for $3 an hour' without talking about what is being done to redress the exploitation of this economically vulnerable group of people?

First, it was legislative changes that removed the family benefits payments of women with school-aged children in place of a New Start allowance. Currently, recipients of the New Start allowance are not allowed to refuse any job offered to them, at the risk of 'being fined' (amounting to losing a substantial portion of their allowance). Combine that with the government's 'industrial relations' legislation that severely curtails unionism and has removed the limit to how little a worker can be paid and we get an MP that can ask such a crooked question.

Family benefits are not given indiscriminately. When the combined income for a family with 2 children under 12 exceeds $100000 their (Family Tax Benefit Part A) benefits dwindle to zero dollars.² That's a sliding scale that begins sliding downwards from a combined income of $30000 per year.

Or, to put it more simply, the average family with 2 children receiving Centrelink benefits lives on a weekly income which falls $88.90 under the poverty line.³ Those 'wealthy women' getting welfare benefits are more specifically women not living under the poverty line who are receiving more than zero cents per fortnight. By our standard of poverty, the 'Henderson Poverty Line', wealthy women are not eligible for benefits.

To raise this particular question is misleading at its core. Its purpose is clearly to pave the way for further reductions in benefits for those mothers and families who are not suffering the same level of deprivation as the most needy recipients. Using poor single mothers as a benchmark for 'fairness' should make us all very nervous.

1 Australian Bureau of Statistics and xinhuanet.com
2 According to the example provided in the Family Assistance Office's Information about your claim for Family Tax Benefit, Maternity Payment, Maternity Immunisation Allowance, Child Care Benefit for the 2004-2005 financial year and/or, a Health Care Card (for a foster child)
3 As of the May 2005 Brotherhood of Saint Laurence Poverty line update