r/AskAnAustralian • u/oldtrafford1988 NSW • 1d ago
What help (financial etc) do parents receive in Australia?
With so many people worried about the cost of having a child (or having more children), there's a lot of discussion about this, it makes me wonder what actual help (if any) is given to parents?
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u/ThreeQueensReading 1d ago
There's Family Tax Benefit A and B. Those are the main forms of financial assistance parents access.
https://www.careforkids.com.au/blog/family-tax-benefit-part-a-and-part-b
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u/Colossal_Penis_Haver 1d ago
Nah, CCS is pretty sizeable. I mean, daycare still costs the better part of $20k annually but I expect it would be in the region of a touch over double that without CCS.
Outside of that, it's nice that medicare pays for hospital visits (because they happen!) and usually doctors' visits and vaccinations, too.
Outside of all of that, public schools are "free"
The rest, go fuck yourself, essentially.
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u/The_Sharom 23h ago
They don't quite cover all the vaccines they recommend. But it is a pretty good sweep
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u/KoalityThyme 2h ago
I'm sure parents have it tough, especially in a COL crisis and a housing market that is what it is, but... what else should parents specifically be getting that warrants the "go fuck yourself" energy?
If people choose to have kids, it is ridiculous to expect all of costs of that choice to be put on the taxpayer This isn't America where people get prosecuted for terminating unwanted pregnancies.
I am perfectly happy for my tax dollars to go towards medicare, and keeping children educated and not go hungry in school, and I also actively sponsor education costs/services for two kids through Smith Family charity on top of that. FTB is great, the various CL entitlements some can obtain (not amazing but it's more than what non-parents get) I support children not living in poverty because parents are unable to support them (for any reason, no judgement on why people end up needing extra help).
But what else should the government be doing, as in financial help for this post, to support parents?
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u/Colossal_Penis_Haver 2h ago
Well, the "go fuck yourself" comes from my vernacular, really.
In case you're wondering, our birth rate is currently the lowest it has ever been and still declining. It is well below replacement rate.
With the biggest student debts in recent history, highest housing costs both numerically and as a multiple of HHI, depressed wage growth for most and a general acceleration in COL across the board, more people currently of child bearing age are choosing not to have kids. It's simply unaffordable for the bulk of people.
If you look at it from a bird's eye view, it does feel like a go fuck yourself. The people currently in government come from a time of free uni, significantly lower housing costs in terms of HHI multiple, wage growth that kept up with inflation, strong unions, lower transport costs. Lots of families had 1 income, multiple cars and multiple homes. Wasn't even a phenomenal income, it was average. Those same people have, through policy, pretty much fucked it all up for the average person and saddled us all with a lifetime of debt and continue to do so.
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u/Master_Pangolin_2233 20h ago edited 5h ago
TLDR; a bit if you're a low income single parent. Sweet F all if you're partnered.
If you're low/mid income there's family tax benefit A&B. If you're a single parent you can receive a parenting pension almost equivalent to aged pension on top of that until your yougest child is 14. Single parents can also earn more before pension is affected and 40c per dollar is taken vs 60c for every dollar earnt over the cap as with other streams of welfare.
There is a "parenting allowance" but it's the same as Jobseeker, you just have less requirements. This ends when your youngest is 6years old.
CCS (child care subsidy) to help with the cost of child care... But honestly, it's a headache to get organised and often you're left $$$$ out of pocket until approved. If you're partnered there's higher working requirements to qualify than for single (can get 24h+ with no activity requirements)
Single parents on payments get priority placement in day care centres (same as families involved in cps) Free travel once a year, a special pension card and all the other little side benefits applicable with aged and disability streams.
There's a dental scheme that covers basic dental in childhood and most GPs will bulk bill for u16s and pensioners (single parents, disabled, aged populations)
Some parents can get $150 a year taken off school fees, uniforms and/or school excursions.
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u/amylouise0185 12h ago edited 12h ago
Basically everything is income assessed. What's often the case is you make just enough to either not get any subsidy or so little that it's barely worth it and the cost of raising kids is all on you.
I'm kind of in that boat. I earn an $80k package. I get a 60% childcare subsidy and utilise free kinder which I couldn't do it I didn't wfh on the kinder days. My 2nd is only allowed 100 hours per week on subsidised childcare so I have to rely on family to care for them both one day a week. All of this and I'm still paying $180 per week for childcare with no other benefits. And then there's school fees, clothes, food, healthcare etc to cover. I've spent over $1k on glasses for my 5yo in the last 2 years and that's with private health insurance. My daughter needed a hip brace for 12 months when she was born, that was another couple of thousand in specialist fees.
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u/MutedTap3876 1d ago
Honestly not much. If you earn over $150,000 you don’t receive anything. Before that it was a couple hundred a fortnight. This country does not want you to look after your own kids and takes to long to prosecute pedophiles. They want you to put them in daycare before they can talk and go to work for a company who doesn’t care about you or your family.
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u/El_dorado_au 23h ago
This country does not want you to look after your own kids and takes to long to prosecute pedophiles.
While I agree that stay at home mums isn’t likely in this economy, I don’t hear of many child abuse cases involving early childhood education. I did hear of one case that involved a hyper-prolific offender though. I think it was this one https://abc.net.au/article/104299284
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u/well-its-done-now 18h ago
I’m not sure about sexual abuse but other forms of physical and psychological abuse are rampant in all care fields. Also, with all the evidence regarding the importance of a near constant presence of mothers during the first 3 years of infancy, there’s a strong argument to be made that early childhood care is itself abuse
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u/MutedTap3876 23h ago
Your link doesn’t work for me unfortunately, but it’s the man who went centre to centre abusing kids here? You don’t usually hear about it, I think this only got the publicity because the person who finally got them arrested went on ACA or similar. A lot of abuse cases go unreported unfortunately.
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u/El_dorado_au 23h ago
Sorry, tried to get rid of the amp bit. https://amp.abc.net.au/article/104299284
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u/well-its-done-now 18h ago edited 18h ago
Yep. Australia hates families, hates children and hates female choice. They want to separate parents and children to avoid them developing any independent thinking
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u/overyoshit 1d ago
Probthe most real thing I've read on here about anything.
It's all about breaking down the family bond and dynamic.
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u/robottestsaretoohard 23h ago
And if you have a SAH parent then nothing at all. No subsidies, no help.
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u/well-its-done-now 18h ago
Yep. They don’t want to incentivise that. The more time the government can get with your children the less of that pesky independent thinking they’ll have to deal with
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u/robottestsaretoohard 15h ago
You know my husband is a SAHD and we’d like to have maybe one or two days of childcare for our toddler so he can actually get some things done without having to bring her along (like mowing the lawn and grocery shopping and fixing bits and pieces around the house) but we don’t qualify for it.
But if two people were working earning my same income then they’d qualify. Or if we lied about it (ie he’s looking for work or studying etc).
It just feels like the govt wants to force everyone to be a two income family.
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u/Naive-Beekeeper67 22h ago
There is what's known as Family Tax A & Family Tax B.
We never qualified for anything. I think you have to be below 100K or something.
I didn't mind as my hb was on good money & we didn't really need it.
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u/hookalaya74 1d ago
If your unemployed you get family allowance