Gillard Government supporting Australian families

As people all across Australia celebrate National Families Week, the Gillard Labor Government is delivering more support for low and middle income families to help them make ends meet.

Labor understands the pressures on working families – that’s why we’ve cut taxes, increased family payments and child care assistance and delivered Paid Parental Leave.

And now in this year’s Budget, we’re delivering more support for Australian families with:

• A new Schoolkids Bonus for more than 1.3 million families – $410 a year for each child in primary school and $820 a year for each child in secondary school to help with education costs.
• A boost to Family Tax Benefit Part A for all 1.5 million elegible families from July 2013 – for familes on the lowest incomes an increase of $600 a year for families with two or more children, and $300 a year for one child families.

These increases are on top of the Government’s household assistance package, which will deliver permanent and ongoing increases to family payments of up to $110 for each child receiving FTB Part A, and up to $69 for families on FTB Part B. These payments start tomorrow.

Today, Liberals Senator Cory Bernadi and Kevin Andrews tried to undo the damage Tony Abbott did last week when he tried to stop families from getting new financial support from this Labor Government.

But Tony Abbott doesn’t understand the pressures faced by low and middle income families. Instead he seems only to be listening to loud and powerful voices of people like Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer.

Only Labor will deliver for hard working Australian families, because we understand how tough it can be to make ends meet.