Schoolkids Bonus, Channel 9, Amelia Adams
E & OE – Proof only
AMELIA ADAMS: The Government’s warned it could get the chop if the Coalition wins Government next year. For more on School Kids Bonus we’re joined now by Families Minister, Jenny Macklin. And Minister, thank you for joining us.
JENNY MACKLIN: My pleasure.
AMELIA ADAMS: It is a lot of money for a lot of people, just talk us through who’s eligible.
JENNY MACKLIN: The families who’ll be receiving this money, 1.3 million families and about 2.2 million children, will be getting $409 if they have a primary school aged child, $818 if they have a secondary school aged child, and the families who’ll get the money are families who are on Family Tax Benefit Part A. So a lot of middle income families who certainly do need this extra help with the cost of educating their children.
AMELIA ADAMS: Yeah, there’s no doubt households will be more than happy to receive those payments, but Minister, there are those that would say this is just a move to ease the pain of the carbon tax?
JENNY MACKLIN: Well not at all, this is about recognising that under the old Education Tax Refund we had around a million families that weren’t getting the full value of that payment, so we want to make these changes so that all of these families, the 1.3 million families across Australia get the full value of the help the Government wants to give them. The money will go straight into families’ bank accounts over the next few days. This is money I think families will put to very good use. We know that whether its school uniforms, shoes, the costs of books and so on, families can really do with the help. We know that families also are very pleased that they won’t have to keep receipts into the future. Families are pretty busy looking after their kids and what they want is a bit of a break. We’ll make sure that they not only get the money but it goes straight into their bank account rather than having to collect receipts and then wait for tax time.
AMELIA ADAMS: All right, Jenny Macklin we’ll have to leave it there for now. Thank you so much for your time this afternoon.
JENNY MACKLIN: Thank you.