• There has been a strong focus on supporting women into the workforce, particularly single mothers. Their primary method for doing so has been to keep the Newstart payment artificially low (currently below the poverty line), increase compliance requirements for receiving income support, and take a punitive approach to people who receive income support payments.

• Single mothers who are in receipt of income support payments are required to engage with jobactive, the job placement providers which are contracted (outsourced) by government. Many single parents with children under the age of 6 years are now required to engage with ParentsNext, a ‘pre-employment’ program which primarily targets single mothers, early school leavers and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. The combined strategies of impoverishing single parent households, controlling and oppressing single mothers through high compliance hurdles, and enabling contractors to cut payments to single parent-headed households for non-compliance is leading to

❖ increased poverty levels for these households (including a marked increase in child poverty levels and an increase in homelessness rates),

❖ an increase in single mothers being forced into precarious, part-time or low-paid positions rather than preparing for and entering into positions that offer a viable career pathway and improved financial security for their households, and

❖ eroded wellbeing, increased stress and other health-related negative impacts.

• These negative impacts are particularly harmful for women who have experienced forms of domestic violence, who have a disability, who experience poor physical or mental health, who have onerous caring duties, who are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, and/or who have recently arrived in Australia.

 

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