TURNBULL’S HORROR CUTS WILL LEAVE FAMILIES, NEW MUMS, PENSIONERS & YOUNG PEOPLE WORSE OFF

08 February 2017

Australian families, new mums, pensioners and young people will all be worse off as a result of the Turnbull Government’s latest round of horror cuts.

Malcolm Turnbull’s horror cuts include:

  • Cuts to Family Tax Benefits – cuts that will leave a typical family on $75,000 around $1,000 a year worse off. More than one million Australian families will be worse off.
  • Cuts to Paid Parental Leave –70,000 new mums will still be worse off.
  • Scrapping the Energy Supplement – a $1 billion cut to pensioners, people with disability, carers and Newstart recipients.
  • Cuts to young people between the ages of 22 and 24 by pushing them onto the lower Youth Allowance – a cut of around $48 a week or almost $2,500 a year.
  • Scrapping the Pensioner Education Supplement and Education Entry Payment.
  • Cutting the pension to migrant pensioners who spend more than six weeks overseas.

Family Tax Benefits

Around 1.1 million Australian families will lose their FTB A end of year supplement.

Even under the Government’s so called compromise these families will still be worse off by $200 per child each year.

Around 300,000 families losing the supplement will not receive the increase to the fortnightly rate because they are on the base rate of FTB A. This will leave these families $726 worse off per child per year.

Around 500,000 of these families earn less than $50,000 a year.

Around 1 million families receiving FTB B will also lose their end of year supplement of $354 per family per year.

On top of that single parent families will lose their Family Tax Benefit Part B entirely when their youngest child turns 16, they will be over $3,000 a year worse off.

A single parent family on $60,000 with a 17 year-old child in high school will be around $3,300 a year worse off.

Paid Parental Leave

70,000 mums will still be worse off under Mr Turnbull’s latest paid parental leave cuts.

Even under the so called compromise cuts, around 70,000 mums with a median income of $62,000 would be on average $5,600 worse off. 

Make no mistake 70,000 new mums on modest incomes will be thousands of dollars worse off.

This cut hurts women who have negotiated access to parental leave from their employer.

For instance a retail worker who gets 8 weeks paid leave from her employer will only have access to 12 weeks from the government instead of 18 weeks.

This means that this new mum will have 20 weeks of paid leave at home instead of 26 weeks (experts recommend mums need 6 months at home caring for their newborn)

She loses around $4,030 in support (6 weeks at the minimum wage of $672.70).

Energy Supplement:

Mr Turnbull and the Liberals also want to cut the Energy Supplement to pensioners, disability support pensioners, carers and Newstart recipients.

Scrapping the Energy Supplement to new pensioners will be a cut of $14.10 per fortnight to single pensioners or $365 a year. Couple pensioners will be $21.20 a fortnight worse off or around $550 a year worse off.

Cuts to Young People:

The Coalition’s harsh plan to make young jobseekers wait five weeks for Newstart combined with their plan to change the eligibility age for Newstart will make life harder for young Australians.

Cuts that Nick Xenophon has already said he won’t support.

Malcolm Turnbull’s doesn’t have a plan to help families his only plan is to rip billions from household budgets across Australia.