Grim picture painted of life in Australia

Press, 31 May 1986, Page 21

Grim picture painted of life in Australia

BY

CHRIS PETERS,

NZPA staff correspondent Twenty per cent of all Australian children are living in poverty, 50 per cent of solo motherheaded families are in financial distress, and 60 per cent of divorce maintentance orders are ignored, according to Government figures. The statistics, released in Melbourne by the Social Security Minister, Mr Brian Howe, paint a grim picture of life in the “Lucky Country” and are a background to possible Government moves to nail husbands who don’t pay their way.

Mr Howe told a Melbourne conference on marriage that most maintenance orders were easily affordable but most parents still refused to pay.

He produced the figures to back an annoucement in Parliament that the

Government is considering a scheme to dock the pay of divorced parents who do not comply with maintenance orders to support their children. According to reports, the scheme, possibly using a national maintenance collection agency, is expected to be introduced in the August Budget. In his Melbourne address, Mr Howe said one in five Australian children under the age of 16 could now bp classed as poor, while the real value of family allowances had fallen almost 30 per cent since they were introduced in 1976-77.

He said the widespread dodging of parental responsibility had driven more and more women into poverty, even though almost a third of their separated partners had weekly earnings that were 1y 2 times the average weekly earnings.

It was harder for solo mothers than for men in the same predicament said Mr Howe.

In 1975, 43 per cent of female solo parents had work, but 10 years later that had fallen to 34 per cent with jobs, while the unemployment rate of solo mothers had quadrupled.

By contrast, in 1984 70 per cent of male solo parents still had jobs.

/Mr Howe said the theory that solo mothers tyere “cynically planning pregnancies to receive extravagant, benefits at the taxpayers’ expense” was a myth. ; “In this regard, the facts speak for themselves,” he said. “Of the 250,000 lone parents receiving supporting parents benefit, only 20 per cent are, to use a loaded archaic expression, unmarried mothers.” Ironically, family sup-

port allowances are under threat from Mr Howe’s own Government with the so-called “razor gang” looking closely at social welfare payments as an area where big savings can be made in the costcutting drive to keep the Budget deficit under control.

He told the conference that as a result there was a danger that support programmes would aim at crisis or breakdown instead of broader measures to help families before they reached crisis point t

In its three years in power the Hawke Government had Increased spending in significant areas of social security, especially for families, but had not fully reversed the cuts made under the previous Liberal Government of Malcolm Fraser, said Mr Howe.