Govt ignores own human rights committee to trim sole parent payments
Some single parents receiving government assistance will be slugged with a $50 a week cut in their payments, after a last-minute campaign to delay the change failed. Despite an appeal to the UN by welfare groups and calls for delay from its own members on a human rights committee, the government has pushed ahead with the change.
The government says that they are supporting parents through other schemes, and that sometimes hard decisions have to be made to be financially responsible.But welfare groups say that a budget surplus should not be achieved on the backs of the least well off members of society.And human rights advocates are also concerned that the government has ignored the advice of a senate committee for human rights that it was instrumental in setting up.