ALP Left figure warns Julia Gillard against hitting families with welfare cuts
JULIA Gillard has been warned from within her own party against punishing families to make short-term budget savings, amid speculation welfare cuts are being considered.
Senior Labor Left figure Doug Cameron told The Australian Online this morning that there would be “significant interest” from the party's backbench about the impact of any welfare changes.
“One of the problems generally in Australian politics has been short-termism,” Senator Cameron said.
“I hope the party leadership don't take a short term view on welfare reform on the basis of balancing the budget.
“There has to be a long-term approach to welfare reform which is about looking after those who can't look after themselves.”
Speculation is mounting that the government is considering welfare cuts to pay for disaster reconstruction, including cuts to the education tax rebate and family tax benefits.
Senator Cameron said he was not opposed to reforms which “made things better”, but too often they had made things worse.
“Unfortunately reform in Australian politics has been about making things worse in the past,” he said.
“As long as it's about making things better, it's about reform. I'm particularly interested in making sure that we not only have a strong economy but a good society.”
The Gillard government is facing opposition to its $1.8 billion flood levy from the Tony Abbott-led Coalition, which argues reconstruction money should come entirely from savings measures.
Senator Cameron said Labor must not abandon those who needed help from the government.
“It's clear to me that we need to as a party continue to recognise that we live in a society, not just an economy.
“And that we need to build a good society and protect those who can't protect themselves is part of a good society,” he said.
The Australian Council of Social Services today warned against cuts to family payments to meet disaster reconstruction costs.
ACOSS chief executive Dr Cassandra Goldie said now was not the time to cut essential social services.
However, the rebuilding effort did provide an opportunity to remove poorly targeted expenditure.
“We do believe that there is wasteful spending in the budget and that this is an opportunity to remove some of the poorly targeted expenditure within the federal budget,” she said.
Dr Goldie nominated the scrapping of the education tax rebate as one possible measure.
She also called for an increase to the dole of $50, saying the Newstart allowance was nearly impossible to live off and worked out as a payment of about $33 a day.
The union movement has pushed for a lift to the unemployment benefit in its federal budget submission.