Another budget has been handed down and single parents struggling with the cost of living will be relieved to see some positive news. Increasing the availability of bulk billing and cheaper pharmaceuticals plus ongoing energy rebates all help tight family budgets and some women will benefit from the modest tax cuts. Agreements with all States and Territories to provide needs-based funding in public schools increases the likelihood that children in single parent families have the chance to succeed in education.
Our CEO Terese Edwards speaks with single mothers most days and too often these conversations detail the hardship they are experiencing. This is confirmed by the latest report from the HILDA study which finds single parent families and their children have the highest rates of poverty, material deprivation, financial stress and housing stress. Single parents are more likely to be low-income renters, those who have experienced the largest increases in rents. Lower quartile rents increased by nearly 18 per cent in 2021 and 2022 compared with just over 11 per cent on average.
Despite welcome increases in Commonwealth Rent Assistance in the last two budgets, the gap between rents and this assistance remains wide. In December 2024, a single parent with two children was paying $390 a week in rent and receiving $106 in rent assistance – a gap of $274 a week. As I wrote on these pages in 2023, poverty is gendered, while 85 per cent of all single parent families with children under 15 years are headed by mothers, 94 per cent of the poorest single parent families (those reliant on Parenting Payment Single), are headed by women.
While this budget provides only modest assistance, we’ve seen far too many budgets where single mother families have been the target of destructive cuts. According to the Parliamentary Budget Office, more than $5 billion was taken from single parent families between 2006-7 and 2018-19 alone (not including changes to family payments).
These harsh policies are often driven by negative, gendered stereotypes and stigma. Once they take hold, they can take years, sometimes decades, to undo. This was the case with the 2006 Howard government policy to force single parents to claim unemployment benefits instead of single parent payments if their youngest child was 8 years or older.
The Gillard government compounded this by removing the protection that had been extended to existing recipients. While the loss of income was punishing, women we spoke with over these dark years often emphasised the pain and insult they felt when their role as mother and care giver was struck out from government policy.
It took more than a decade to achieve a positive change. While the 2023-24 budget did not restore eligibility to age 16, the increase from 8 to age 14 has meant around 100,000 single parent families have improved their income and been recognised as parents.
That budget also abolished the punitive ParentsNext, a compulsory requirement for mothers with children as young as nine months to engage in prescribed activities or lose access to income support.
The 2025-26 Women’s Budget Statement brings to light the urgent need to reevaluate government and financial systems that can be exploited to inflict harm and at this week’s Future Women’s Budget dinner, Minister for Women Senator Katy Gallagher emphasised the Audit of Australian Government Systems.
SMFA has long pinpointed significant deficiencies within the child support system could and raised concerns about the adverse effects of mutual obligations. We’ve already shared these insights with the Department of Social Services and the Office for Women, aiming to drive meaningful change for women and families across Australia.
There’s much more to do and we’ve identified three priorities for future federal budgets:
- Introduce a new safety supplement – a 12 month additional payment for survivors of domestic violence which would be paid in addition to any other income support they would qualify for. We want to develop the details with the next government. While we strongly support the Escaping Domestic Violence payment which will be made permanent in July, it provides a one-off $1,500 in cash and $3,500 in vouchers – not enough for a woman and her children to establish a new life which can take many months or even years.
- Fix child support – remove the link between child support income and family tax payments – the very harsh income test is reducing income for 300,000 parents (and taking $810m per year off these families) plus the link can be weaponised by former vexatious partners and trigger a Robodebt-like loss of income for the mother and her children. Ensuring payers (usually Dads) lodge an annual tax return instead of estimated provisional income would also help ensure the scheme does its job of lifting children out of poverty.
- Restore Parenting Payment Single to age pension levels and income tests – this was the case until 2009 and would mean a $60 a week increase in payments as well as allowing single parents and their families to keep more of what they earn from part-time work. In 2019-20, ACOSS/UNSW found 72% of Parenting Payment Single recipients lived in poverty, the highest rate of all income support recipients, including those receiving JobSeeker payments.
Parental separation is well-recognised as a challenging time for children. If the reason for separation is family and domestic violence, mothers must spend time helping children heal, in addition to the numerous practical measures needed to establish a new life for the family. Women often reduce or cease paid employment while this is undertaken, yet our community and government policies too often erase or undervalue this unpaid work. The ongoing policy to obligate Parenting Payment Single recipients to look for work when their youngest child turns six reflects this.
Single Mother Families Australia is undertaking a project highlighting the unpaid care work many single mothers do and honoring the important role they play bringing up around one in five Australian children. We hope this will contribute to the Federal Government’s Working for Women Strategy which acknowledges the bulk of unpaid care work is shouldered by women.
Professor Kay Cook from Swinburne University is leading new research to better understand the time single mothers spend on unpaid care work and other tasks. If you’re a single Mum, please head to this link to take the short survey and contribute to this critical research.
If we can highlight the voices of single mothers and the care they provide, we will have a stronger chance of future federal budgets that improve the lives of single mothers and their children.