Steve Fielding (Victoria, Family First Party) Share this | Hansard source

Family First supports a more generous scheme for mums, but not one that discriminates against stay-at-home mums and this amendment will make the difference even greater. Therefore stay-at-home mums will be, I suppose, discriminated against even more so under this more generous scheme. Family First does support a more generous scheme for all mums, but obviously these amendments are for only those mums in the paid workforce and stay-at-home mums are discriminated against.

To show at this point in the debate whether stay-at-home mums are better off under the government’s assistance than people in the paid workforce, if you take an example of a stay-at-home mum where the father earns $80,000 and the mother has no income, the total net income after tax and assistance—I will not bore you with the details, I am happy to go through this with the minister later on—is $77,019. In the case of a working mother where the father earns, say, $60,000 and the mother earns $20,000 the total net income after tax and assistance is $81,279. Quite clearly that particular family with the stay-at-home mum is about $4,000 worse off. After you take into account all the assistance and the tax advantages through working, they are actually worse off.

So this is the argument, and I suppose that you can go back and forward in this argument: stay-at-home mums are discriminated against and their work of looking after kids full time is not valued by the government. Therefore, this amendment actually makes the difference even higher, and stay-at-home mums will be worse off compared to those in the paid workforce. That would be a concern to Family First.