Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. Minister, how is the government improving support for Australian families?

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Shortland for her question. She knows, as does this side of the House, that this budget is all about improving support for Australian families. We are delivering additional support for low- and middle-income families and, as I outlined yesterday, we are particularly adding support to families with teenagers. Next year in total this government will spend $32 billion on assistance for families through the Family Tax Benefit, through our child-care rebate, through the Baby Bonus, our new Paid Parental Leave scheme and our family support service.

Of course, we know that we need to continue to look at different ways to improve support and especially providing that assistance for families who are doing it tough. One of the very important centrepieces of this budget is the way in which we are delivering both additional support and increased obligations for those jobless families and for teenage parents and especially targeting those areas of Australia where we know we have very high levels of unemployment. We want to give those families, especially those single parents and teenage parents, the extra support that they need to finish their education, to get the skills that they need so that they can get a job. We want them to get the most out of the economic opportunities that this country has to offer.

The budget includes $40 million extra for Communities for Children, and that is a very important addition in support for families who are doing it very, very hard, especially in the most disadvantaged locations across the country. In these areas we are also providing additional child-care support so that families, particularly single parents and young mums, will be able to go back to school and get the additional training that they need so that they will get jobs in the future. The budget also includes an extension to the education tax refund to cover school uniforms, which I am sure will be widely welcomed by parents around the country.

One of the areas that is very important in this budget for families who are under very significant pressure, families with children who have a disability or with children who have a mental illness, is that we are investing $500 million in new mental health services for those families where either their children or their young people are suffering from mental illness. There is also $150 million for those families who have a child with a disability. We want to make sure that those families get the support they need so that they can afford early intervention for their children with a disability.

These are very significant reforms that have been widely welcomed by organisations like Family Relationships Australia, Uniting Care and Anglicare, all of whom recognise that this budget is all about putting families at the centre of this government's concern.