The Albanese government will pay superannuation on paid parental leave, in a $1.1bn budget Mother’s Day announcement.
Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers on Sunday undertook a breakfast television blitz to spruik Tuesday’s federal budget.
Mr Chalmers said the initial outlay for the super announcement will be $1.1bn in this year’s budget, then when it’s up and running, it’ll be more than $600m a year after that.
“It’s a really important investment. You know, when mums or dads go on the government paid parental leave system, they shouldn’t be missing out on superannuation,” he told Nine’s Weekend Today.
“So we are stepping in.”
The measure will help women in particular who until now had missed out on super while on parental leave.
“We recognise that when people are making difficult choices about whether to have kids, we need to support them with paid parental leave, which we’ve extended super on paid parental leave,” he said.
Last week Mr Chalmers, himself a father of three, flagged additional support in the budget for Australian families to have more children if they wished.
Australia’s recent surge in population growth, buoyed by a soaring migration intake, has become a hot button political issue, and has led to calls for the government to bolster natural population growth rather than solely rely on international arrivals.
The Treasurer said other measures to help families including billions of dollars for early childhood education.
Cost of living measures
Mr Chalmers also indicated there would be “substantial” measures in the budget to help ease the cost of living pressures facing Australian households, in addition to the stage three tax cuts that will come into effect on July 1.
“It will be good for us, for middle Australia, good for families and it will recognise the pressures that people are under,” he told Sky’s Sunday Agenda program.
“The cost of living relief in this budget won’t be identical to what we’ve seen in the past, but it will be substantial,” he said.
He also said help for power prices would be including and ruled out any change to the petrol excise.
Mr Chalmers also said it would be a “responsible budget” that wouldn’t add pressure to inflation which remains too high at 4.35 per cent.
“These are uncertain times to make forecasts about the economy but people should expect to see one of the consequences of our budget is low inflation rather than higher,” he told the ABC.
More to come