INCOME SECURITY

Common Parenting Payment

The Government is strongly committed to supporting families with children and recognises the disruption and inconvenience which can affect families when their living arrangements change and they are required to move between Sole Parent Pension and Parenting Allowance. These payments will be replaced from 20 March 1998 by a single Parenting Payment which recognises a person's responsibilities for caring for children and will streamline claim and payment processes.
This change will reduce the stigma often associated with receipt of the Sole Parent Pension and treat people with children in a more consistent way. Only certain aspects of both payments have been aligned and sole parents have retained the core features of the pension payment rate, income testing and concession card.

Extension of Jobs Education and Training programme

The Jobs, Education and Training (JET) programme successfully aids entry or re-entry into the workforce through an integrated programme of advice and counselling, access to child care, and education and employment assistance. The JET programme is currently available to Sole Parent Pensioners, people in receipt of carers pensions and widows receiving social security payments.
In order to ensure that people caring for dependent children are treated in a more consistent way, the Government is extending access to the JET programme to recipients of the new Parenting Payment. Services will be targeted to parents at two critical points: when the youngest child has recently commenced school, or high school. These times are when a parent is most likely to reassess the possibility of paid work.
Included in this initiative is additional funding of $3 million per year to boost the capacity for JET participants to have pre-vocational training and be more able to take up employment.

Activity Test Changes for Expectant Mothers

Changes will be introduced to make Department of Social Security payment arrangements more responsive and less intrusive for unemployed women who are expectant mothers.
Under current guidelines, expectant mothers in the latter stages of pregnancy need to meet Newstart Allowance (NSA) activity test requirements or they have to transfer to Special Benefit which has a harsher income test than NSA. This measure will enable expectant mothers to remain on NSA, by providing a temporary exemption from activity test obligations from up to six weeks prior to the expected date of confinement to six weeks after the birth of their child.

Family Payment if a child goes overseas

Under current arrangements more than minimum Family Payment (FP) is not payable if a child is absent from Australia on a FP payday. This has resulted in financial hardship for some families who continue to meet ongoing financial responsibilities for the child but who cease to be entitled to more than minimum FP while the child is overseas. In the past low income families have had their FP reduced by an average of $80 per week when their child was out of Australia. Under this initiative families will continue to be eligible to receive maximum FP when a child and/or parent goes overseas for up to eight weeks.

The Commonwealth service delivery Agency

Women make up 60 per cent of the almost four million Australians who receive income support payments (this figure excludes family payments and allowances). The new Commonwealth Service Delivery Agency (CSDA) will commence operation on 1 July 1997. It will be a user friendly 'one stop shop'. Customers will have more convenient and better access to information about government services, benefits and allowances.
The first priority for the CSDA will be to deliver all the payments and services currently delivered by the Department of Social Security together with some of the employment and student services of the Department of Employment, Education and Training and Youth Affairs. This means for people receiving unemployment benefits there will no longer be the disadvantage of having to deal with different government agencies in different locations. Other Commonwealth services will be added later, including Childcare Assistance and the Childcare Cash Rebate. There will be a large investment in the Teleservice facility to assist the 'one stop' service.