Federal Government to introduce new split welfare bill to House of Representative with Labor's backing

Updated

A new social security bill will today be presented to Parliament by the Government as it seeks to bank budget savings the Opposition has indicated it will support.

Finance Minister Mathias Cormann yesterday raised the prospect of splitting the two welfare bills currently before the Senate, as a way to pass close to $3 billion of savings that have Labor's backing.

But Opposition families and payments spokeswoman Jenny Macklin says the Government will present an entirely new bill to the Lower House instead.

"This is the most humiliating backdown from this Government, I'd have to say I've never seen such a shambolic budget strategy," she told the ABC's AM program.

Ms Macklin said Labor had consistently told the Government it would support the reduction of the highest income threshold for Family Tax Benefit Part B, and other smaller changes, which add up to $2.7 billion.

"We'd indicated that for months now, we would have done it by splitting the bills," she said.

"The Government, up until today, were incapable of figuring out their strategy in the Senate, and I think it just demonstrates their complete and utter incompetence."

Labor says original welfare bills would have never passed Senate

Ms Macklin rejects suggestions Labor could have achieved the same result by amending the bills that are currently before the Senate.

"It was never going to get to the amendment point, it was never going to get beyond the second reading," she said.

"Labor was never going to support changes that had cuts to the pensions, these massive cuts to families, we were never going to support putting young unemployed people in the position where they had nothing to live on for six months."

Those proposed welfare changes, which do not have the support of Labor or the Greens, represent close to $10 billion of budget savings.

The Government said it remained committed to its entire budget strategy, but Treasurer Joe Hockey also warned further budget cuts will need to be made to pay for new defence and security spending.

Mr Hockey said the new cuts will be revealed in December in the mid-year economic and fiscal outlook (MYEFO).

Topics: social-policy, government-and-politics, welfare, budget, australia

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