Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs and Minister for Disability Reform. Will the minister update the House on how the government is delivering fairer support to help families with school costs? How is the government making sure that families can access this support? What would be the impact if it were taken away?

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Disability Reform) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Robertson for her question and, more particularly, for the wonderful work that she does up there on the Central Coast in standing up for the needs of families, especially all those young families who live in her electorate.

Australian families face a very clear choice in the coming election: a clear choice between a Labor government that wants to deliver the support that families need and those opposite, a Liberal Party that will cut to the bone. Labor delivered the schoolkids bonus, and that is delivering much-needed support to families. From next week families will start to get the second schoolkids bonus, which will be paid into families' bank accounts, and 1.3 million families will receive this extra money. Those families with a child in secondary school will receive $410 and those with a child in primary school will receive $205. This is much-needed assistance for families to help with the cost of school uniforms, winter sports gear and making sure that families get that extra help with schoolbooks as children go into term 3.

We know that those opposite have one plan. They might not have many plans, but they do have one: to abolish the schoolkids bonus, to claw back all of this money—they just think it is a joke. This opposition would take $15,000 out of the pockets of an ordinary family over the school lives of their children. That is what those opposite want to do.

While we are talking to families about the benefits we are delivering to them, I can inform the House that those opposite do not mind getting some of the family kits from the government. They are out there—the member for Hume, the member for Hughes, the member for Boothby, the members for Riverina, Calare, Grey, and even the whip, the member for Leichhardt—ordering the families kits from the government, telling everyone that they like the schoolkids bonus and how great it is, even though they voted against it and are going to abolish it. Get honest with the Australian people.