The Government will slash $1 billion from welfare to single parents and the disabled over the next three years, it has confirmed just before the start of its new Welfare to Work regime today.
With the Government predicting a budget surplus of $10.8 billion this year and preparing to hand out $36.7 billion in tax cuts over the next four years, welfare advocates and others have questioned its reduced support for some of Australia's most vulnerable.
According to figures from the Australian Council of Social Service, from today 158,000 people who would have received a disability or parenting pension will be forced onto the lower Newstart allowance if they are assessed as being able to work 15 hours a week. This will mean $46 a week less for disabled people and $29 a week less for single parents, according to the National Centre for Economic and Social Modelling
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The Federal Opposition says the Government's new welfare-to-work laws hurt the most vulnerable people in society.
Catholic Welfare Australia says the move is dangerous and could have disastrous consequences.
The Opposition's employment spokeswoman, Penny Wong, agrees.
She says 60,000 people with a disability and 70,000 single parents face a massive loss of support.
"Now clearly all of us agree, someone who can work should work but the Howard Government's botched welfare changes fail to tackle the reasons why so many Australians remain jobless," she said. "Their changes reduce the incentive to work, make it harder to study or train, and most importantly focus on cutting the household budgets of some of our most vulnerable Australians by nearly 20 per cent."
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