Here goes, then. I'm a single parent (the father's a serial wife deserter), who never got a cent in maintenance. I'm also the child of a single parent (my father died when I was four, intestate and weeks after he and my stay-home, unskilled mother had bought their first house). Mum couldn't get a War Widow's pension at the time, although she managed to get one in her 70s, when Veterans' Affairs was desperate to spend its budget. She worked in a low-paid job until she was forced to retire, paid off the house, and tried to provide for her retirement, which meant having a protracted fight with the NSW public service, which at the time was very reluctant to allow older women access to the superannuation scheme. By the time she won this right, despite making contributions higher than she could afford, the time left to make them meant her payout was nugatory.

I used to think of this quite a lot when I worked for the (then) Department of Social Security, assessing applications for family payments. The grant of Family Allowance Supplement (the payment for the very disadvantaged) is or was assessed on taxable income. I ended up having to grant it to the stay-home wife of a Double Bay dentist, whose turnover was $800,000 the previous year, but taxable income $4000. At the same time, a couple of itinerant workers whose income was well under the poverty line waited 15 months to have their claim paid, because they weren't often at the address to which the department sent letters, and claims lapse after 90 days without a reply. They only got the payment after 15 months because I hid the file until they responded.

I don't begrudge payments to the better-off, but having seen my mother do it tough, and done it (less so) myself, I do find it alarming to see the truly needy denied welfare which goes to the beneficiaries of creative accounting. And don't get me started on priests' and nuns' 'stipends' not being counted as income for welfare purposes.

Let’s make it simple.
1/ Peak oil means we’ve burnt all the easy stuff… it’s only going up from now on.
http://eclipsenow.org/

2/ There is no alternative energy that is as easy to mine, in the same volumes, as cheaply and with as much “energy profit” as light sweet crude conventional cheap oil. There is nothing to switch over to after the end of cheap oil.
http://eclipsenow.org/facts/alternateenergy.html

3/ Farming itself depends on oil. We use 10 calories of petro-chemical energy to make just 1 calorie of food energy. Every McDonald’s hamburger took 10 times it’s energy in oil and gas to make!
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html

4/ Everything is going to change, from city design through to international globalized trade, and we may not be able to support the current world population.
http://eclipsenow.org/facts/consequences.html

5/ So the government introduces a baby bonus to encourage population growth.

Smart, real smart. As in, “Get Smart.”

I would like to comment on Wre's post of January 12, specifically the point that his mother is '....ineligible for most welfare because her major asset (her home) is worth too much.'

It is my understanding that the value of a person's home is exempt from the Centrelink and Veterans' Affairs assets test. If it is situated on a large block (such as on a farm) then the value of the excess land only is means tested. It doesn't matter whether her home is a mansion in Vaucluse or a cottage in Mount Druitt unless she owns half the suburb! It only becomes a means testing issue if the person leaves the home for an extended period, such as admission to a nursing home. Of course other real estate (not the principal home) is treated as an asset under the nornal rules.

Tasman,
The $400 is per "fortnight" [benefit], and the $500 per "week"[wage], if that helps you any in your deliberations, someone was very mischievious when comparing the amounts, perhaps intentionally so..

You won't find anyone on a pension on a flight to Fiji, or anywhere else for that matter, you only recieve a pension when you have no other "legal" means of support. For most pensioners like myself the pension of 150-200 dollars a week is the difference between life and death literally. Before anyone jumps, I am on a pension because I have recently been made redundant, after a work history of more than 40 years, some 7 years of that 7 days a week every week, and I of course paid my taxes unlike others mentioned in yesterdays Australian newspaper.

Some can hide income but I have neither the inclination or the ability, I thought of it as an honor to be able to contribute to my nation.

SHONGA, I have seen the income statements of seperated parents of a school age child from a couple of years ago. At that point she had the care of her child about 7 1/2 days a fortnight, was working one day a week and had a significant amount of money in the bank (close to 1/2 of the value of an average house in this area). The father cared for the child the rest of the time. I'm a little bit rusty on the exact figures but from memory they go something like the following. The father is a PAYE wage earner with no real capacity for hidden income.

The various forms of child related welfare paid to the mother (including C$A money) documented in that statement added up to about $350 a week tax free. Add to that about $100 after tax for the one day a week work. The money from the sale of their house was in a bank and earning almost no income, I suspect that might have been in part strategy to help during the C$A assessment stage. At that point she was not renting so the figure did not include rent assistance. Nor does the figure include discounts for people on "the pension" and other hard to quantify benefits.

Her former husband working a well paid full time job was netting after tax and C$A about $120 a week more. That does not include superannuation. By the time the former husband took out his train fares, after school care fees (some for the time the child was in the mothers care) the net difference was down to about $70 a week.

It is reasonable to assume that the mother would be able to reduce her grocery bill and other costs by shopping around, using markets and other resources which are not readily available to the night time grocery shopper. Allow for some possible savings elsewhere and the picture is not as clear as some would like to portray it.

R0bert

Shonga, "...livin' it up on drought relief"
If ignorance was a deli, you would be the caviar.