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

The fundamental assumption that the member opposite makes is that grandparents do not have a capacity to work or work more. We have a grandparent doing quite well in the chair to my right. We have grandparents on the opposite side of this House engaging in the workforce. As our population ages the workplace will be more and more full of grandparents.

One of the assumptions that we have made in devising this package is that human beings are not passive, that when their circumstances change they make decisions for themselves. What history has shown is that very often one of those decisions is to either engage or engage more in the workplace. The old-fashioned and ridiculous assumption that members opposite have is that if you are a single-parent carer or a grandparent carer then your engagement with the workforce has somehow ended, that it is over, that your life is over and all that is left for you is caring. That is an assumption that we have never shared.

What this is all about and what is at the hart of everything that we are doing in this package here is creating incentives for workplace engagement. Of the 1.3 million—

Mr Dreyfus interjecting—

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