The gotcha on all of this is making it actually work for people. In the UK example as described they gone to pains to ensure that people are always better off working than not working.

I wonder if that includes things like public transport costs, out of hours care and the other incidentals that don't get counted as tax deductible but which are very much costs associated with holding down a job.

I'd like to see some creative ways of easing the transition for parents. Ways of making it easier for single parents to work within school hours (including time getting to and from job's). Out of hours care can be very useful but it can also be hard on all involved especially if there are already issues. Waking a kid early to drop them at before school care, picking them up late then home to get dinner, deal with homework and all the other stuff then early to bed because they have to be up early the next day can lead to a life with not much quality time for kids.

I do think that there is a lot of value in helping parents get back into the workforce but we need to do it in a way that's not destructive, that leaves parents feeling more empowered than desperate.

R0bert

Methinks Peter has been out of Australia too long. Parenting payment recipients already have to start looking for work when the youngest child turns 6. The age 8 thing is when they lose entitlement to parenting payment and have to apply for something else - usually Newstart allowance.

Such "welfare" payments expanding enormously during the Howard government.
Daffy Duck,
As long as we have such a huge public service it'll always administered by ALP orientated people, no matter if LIB/ALP is in Government. That has been the crux of the dilemma since 1972. There is no such thing as a Liberal Government Public service.

Welfare for the rich or "better off" is at least as large as the budget assigned to aged care. Welfare for the rich includes negative gearing, which ought to be the first to go. Just repealing this single money for nothing measure, would add at least 5 billion to the surplus.
Ending all the forms of welfare for the better off, through proper means testing of all govt supplied services including public education and health, would add around 26 billion to the surplus.
And wouldn't that create angst in coalition ranks and the usual mostly moribund medley/Gazelle conducted chorus, of class warfare and the politics of envy, blah, blah, etc/etc.
Sure some of the disabled could work, say in call centres or some such?
But very few of them have the resources, to relocate to places like India!
Where the positions that they might actually occupy, are being outsourced in the endless mindless quest to reach the lowest common denominator!
Or become the richest permanent resident(s) in the local graveyard?
A public service dominated by ALP appointments?
Horse feathers and bird's fur!
Rhrosty.

The sole parents pension should be abolished. The responsibility for looking after children is and ought to be on those who want to do it. If they cannot or will not do it, the ordinary laws of child protection should apply.

There is no reason why policy should create two classes of parents: those who have to work to support themselves and their own children *and* toil under coercion for the benefit of others; and those who have the privilege to have babies without taking responsibility for their own reproductive behaviour. That latter are not any more "vulnerable" than anyone else who has to work to earn an income. It's entirely their choice whether to look after their own children(!). They should not be able to force other people into being their chattels and slaves to support them.

Women have everything they need to obtain child support, and it's right between their legs. The fact that the supporters of the pension shrink from this obvious conclusion proves that these laws are not about social security at all, but are only laws of foisting the sexual morality of the privileged onto everyone else: a kind of compulsory reverse-patriarchy.

Besides, it's the government itself that is causing the problem they claim to be necessary to solve. At present, the chattel class have to go to work all day, then after work go shopping, bring it all home, unpack it, cook, clean up and clean the house as well. If we were really concerned about social justice, we would abolish the pension and the tax to pay for it. Those now receiving the pension should work in the households of those now paying to support their selfishness and greed. They could do the shopping, the cooking, the cleaning, the lawn-mowing; and receive cash payment direct without income tax. That would be more sensible and just, wouldn't it?

Thus the problem is not their "vulnerability", it's a problem entirely caused by the state dividing society unjustly, preventing consensual solutions eg child-minding, and then having the gall to claim to be necessary as our saviour.

Jardine K Jardine
In calling for the abolishment of the single mother’s support pension it seems to me
That you are missing the fact that when a mother is looking after her own child she is saving the government the cost of building , subsidising and paying childcare workers. That is something that costs the government billions of dollars every year. Why is the job of looking after children and babies considered to be work worthy of wages when carried out by a stranger to the child, but worth nothing when carried out by the child’s own mother.

If you want a society around you that is young and fit enough to look after you in your old age Or to send to war to protect you, then acknowledge that motherhood is the engine room of the nation otherwise go and live out in the desert by yourself somewhere without the benefits and protection of a society around you.

Or are you a mother who goes out to work and wants to hate mothers who don’t? I am actually greatly in favour of mother’s having outside employment,but Your attitude to single mother’s here is saying that looking after babies and children has no value, in doing so you denigrate the work of raising children and motherhood worldwide.

Or are you a man who has never done much looking after children? Go and do some real 24hour all week babycare of a couple of children under 5years old. I bet it wouldn’t take long for you to run back to an easy 8 to 9hour working day with your tail between your legs. The sheer work load in the time needed alone, placed on an individual looking after young children is not for wimps.

In fact the engineers sent by Dr.Phil to assess a mother’s at home’s work load with 2children found she put in a 16hour day and when her husband actually stayed home and tried it, he came back on Television and apologised to all the mothers everywhere for his previous attitude