ACOSS strongly welcomes today's announcement to halt payment suspensions and penalties for the 100,000 women who have, until now, been forced into the punitive ParentsNext program.
This announcement follows the recommendations of Julian Hill's select committee report and is a welcome response to criticism that change needed to come quickly.
ACOSS CEO Dr Cassandra Goldie said:
''Today we are celebrating that the Government has listened to women about the important work of raising children.
"The immediacy with which the Government is ushering this change in is welcome and overdue recognition of the unreasonable and punitive nature of the ParentsNext program.
"Payment suspensions and other penalties in ParentsNext had been causing harm since 2018.
"60 per cent of the 230,000 on parenting payment single have experienced domestic and family violence. When forced into the ParentsNext program they were then subject to pointless and intrusive activity requirements for parents with children as young as nine months, enforced by threats of income support payment suspensions.
"It was clear from three separate inquiries that the program interfered with the right to social security and imposed unreasonable limits on parents' rights to privacy.
"We are pleased reports suggest the future program to support parents with pre-school aged children will be voluntary - a key recommendation of the Select Committee inquiry.
"We thank and congratulate everyone, most of all the many parents – mostly women – who have been subject to the punitive ParentsNext program for so long, for standing up and calling for this program to be ceased over many years."
