Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Payments) Share this | Hansard source

In the time remaining, I hope we will have answers from the Minister for Social Services to all of the questions that the member for Griffith has already made to him and also the questions that I put to him on the government's decision to increase the age pension age to 70.

I want to turn now to another new item in the budget this year, and that is the government's decision to abolish the bereavement allowance. As the minister knows, the bereavement allowance is a fortnightly payment paid for a maximum of 14 weeks from the date of the death of a spouse. I would like to get some details from the minister about how this is actually going to work. How many people will lose the bereavement allowance? How many people will be worse off on each of the different payments that will be affected? Could the minister outline each of the different payments people are on that are expected to lose the bereavement allowance, how much worse off they will be and—I am sure the department has this figure—how much worse off, on average, people will be over the 14 weeks?

This is just the latest cut from this government. We have seen some extraordinary efforts over the last four years. In the main, most of the horrific cuts have not got through the parliament. Some of the people on the other side may have forgotten—but we have not—that the Liberal-National government tried to cut more than $8 billion out of the pockets of family payments recipients. It wanted to cut indexation of the pension, which would have seen pensioners lose an extraordinary amount of money over the next 10 years. Fortunately, the vast majority of these cuts have not got through the parliament and Labor has been able to protect the poorest people in this country.

This latest cut of the bereavement allowance is extraordinary. I would like the minister to answer these specific questions: how much worse off will people be; how much will they lose as a result of the abolition of the bereavement allowance; and what are the details of each of the different categories of income support recipients who will lose that payment?

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