Balancing work and family

Work and family

The changes to Family Tax Benefit A and Family Tax Benefit B provide extra cash for families and improve rewards from work, especially for mothers returning to work after having children.

Further help for those balancing work and family responsibilities is provided through a new maternity payment and extra child care places.

Maternity Payment

To provide further help for families at the crucial period around the birth of a child, a new Maternity Payment of $3,000 for each new born child will be introduced from July 2004. This will increase to $4,000 in July 2006 and $5,000 in July 2008.

This new benefit will be available to all families, regardless of the family’s income. It will incorporate the existing Maternity Allowance and the Baby Bonus, with existing recipients of the Baby Bonus maintaining their entitlement under that programme. Around 250,000 families are expected to benefit from this payment each year.

Extra child care places

An additional 40,000 outside school hours child care places and an extra 4,000 family day care places are provided in the Budget.

This will meet demand for such places, providing extra help for those families that are combining work and family responsibilities and currently have difficulty in finding a child care place.

This will mean that since 1996, the Government has increased child care places in child care centres, family day care and outside school hours care by 266,000 places — an increase of 85 per cent.

Family Tax Benefit (FTB), Part B

From July 2005, when a secondary earner (usually the mother) returns to work, income from employment will not be counted against eligibility for FTB (B) already received, so they keep the FTB (B) received prior to re-entering the workforce.