Family income support policy issues

Supporting families with children is one of the Government’s key objectives. It plays a major part in the building of Australia’s future generations. We have a strong, effective family assistance system that has delivered substantial benefits to families. This paper reviews major developments in the provision of financial assistance to families with children, how these will be changed under the Government’s tax reform package and identifies some outstanding policy issues. The paper does not seek to overview the interaction between the family payments and the income tax systems insofar as they impact on the financial position of Australian families. That is not the purpose of this paper, which is to raise outstanding policy issues within the realm of the income support provided to families. Studies that have examined the interaction between the tax and family assistance systems point to the marked rise in the value of family payments for lower income families and the relative decline in family payments for higher income families over the past two decades