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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said 14 is the right age,when a child needs less support at home,.Credit:AFR

“It’s an investment in these families. I know firsthand what it’s like to go up with a single mum doing it tough,and we want to make sure that the children of single-parent families had the best opportunities in life,to go on and ... aspire to a good life with good jobs with security.”

That means single parents,mostly mothers,will have an additional six years on the single parenting payment before being moved to the lower JobSeeker payment.

The government estimates it will help at least 57,000 single parents,and Albanese said the move will cost $1.9 billion through to 2026-27,and lift the payments some parents receive by $176.90 a fortnight.

The Prime Minister said the government still wants single parents where possible to move into full-time employment,but the change will allow at least some to pick up more part-time employment.

The single-parent payment is$949.30 a fortnight,and a parent of two children can earn up to $227.20 before their payment starts to be reduced — more than they could if they were on the JobSeeker payment.

“Eight was far too low. An eight-year-old needs mum or dad or their carer to cook them dinner,to look after them,a 14-year-old starts to,in today’s world,starts to move into that change into adulthood. And we think this is absolutely the right balance as well,” Albanese said.

The announcement comes a day before Treasurer Jim Chalmers hands down his second budget.

The Prime Minister said the increase in the cut-off age was also the responsible thing to do in a budget that was balancing cost of living relief on one side,and high inflation on the other.

“We’ve put out the figure of $14.6 billion of relief,but the energy price relief plan is an example of how we’ve designed the support to not add to inflationary pressures in the economy,” he said on Monday.

Earlier on Monday,opposition finance spokeswoman Jane Hume said the Coalition would wait and see what the details of the federal government’s $14.6 billion cost of living support package was before agreeing to support it.

“Australian families are making some really difficult decisions right now trying to manage their own budgets. The Labor government has to do the same,” she said on ABC RN Breakfast.

“The only way that this budget is a genuine cost of living budget is if Labor reigns in its spending and delivers a plan to tackle inflation because getting inflation down is the only policy that will provide cost of living relief to all Australians.”

Professor Anne Summers,a former Labor advisor who authored a recent report on violence and poverty and hadcriticised apparent plans to increase the cutoff age to 12,welcomed Albanese’s announcement on expanding the eligibility for single parenting payments.

“You have taken up the legacy of Gough Whitlam when he introduced the Supporting Mothers Payment in 1973,changing lives,” she tweeted.

A decision announced by Gillard in 2012 cut back the amount of assistance paid to single parents,forcing them onto lower benefits when their children reached the age of eight instead of the previous cut-off age of 16.

The decision dogged Labor for years and has been blamed by a range of experts for an increase in child poverty rates.

At the time,it was projected to save the government about $700 million over four years,but it reduced single parents’ incomes by about $100 a week.

Nearly a quarter of a million parents – mostly women – receive the single-parenting payments.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news,views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley.Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.

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