Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Social Services) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for the question. I would like to thank the members of the economic advisory committee. They did significant work in preparing a lot of information. One of the key elements was to make an argument to lift the base rate of working-age payments, particularly those on JobSeeker and other payments. In addition, the women's economic advisory committee did their work and made it very clear about the importance of extending the eligibility for the single parent payment. Of course, the women's economic security equality task force, as well as the Productivity Commission, as the economic inclusion committee all spoke about the importance of the potential increase to rent assistance. We drew on a lot of information, a lot of evidence. We had a lot of budgetary measures to consider, along with our energy policy and other measures in other portfolios that went into the budget process. Of course, we considered all of those, as we always said we would when it came to income support payments, particularly JobSeeker, through the budget process. We relied on a significant amount of varied information to make those budgetary decisions.

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