Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question. I must say that during that interview I had mistaken the question for one about FTB part A. But honestly, if after the number of interviews there were yesterday the most important thing on your mind is mistaking a question about FTBB for one about FTTA—fair enough.

But the issue raised, about grandparent carers, is a live and fair issue. There are two issues with grandparent carers under the FTB system, both A and B. The first issue is one that is very difficult to tackle and that needs to be given further policy attention, and that is that when an FTB grandparent carer is not the legal carer or guardian of the child then the money that is paid under FTBA and FTBB flows to the legal parent and may never reach the hands of the grandparent who is actually caring for the child. That is a very large problem that we have to work through, as a government and as a parliament, and fixing that problem is not easy. The secondary problem is the one you have mentioned, and unequivocally what we are doing here is trying to increase workforce participation—

Ms Macklin interjecting—

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