A Melbourne single mother has lodged a complaint with the United Nations, labelling changes to Australia’s parenting payment scheme discrimination and a human rights abuse.

Mother-of-three Juanita McLaren and the National Council of Single Mothers and their Children have lodged a complaint, officially known as a communication, with the UN over cuts and changes to the parenting payment.

The complaint asks the UN to determine whether Australia has violated its international human rights obligations. Supporters hope the complaint will hold the government accountable for its cuts.

The decision to complain to the UN was not made lightly, McLaren said. But she said she could no longer be silent and allow what she called blatant discrimination against single parents, most likely to be women, to go unnoticed.



“It is outrageous the way in which my personal agency and financial security was effectively controlled by the government as some sort of punitive measure because I was a single mum,” she said. “I am seen as an unemployed worker before I am seen as a mother and, because my parenting doesn’t have a dollar value, it is seen as completely some sort of lark.”

McLaren’s life changed when she was left to raise three children alone. It changed again when changes to the welfare system in 2006 by the Coalition government moved people off the parenting payment when their youngest child turned eight, forcing them on to Newstart.

Juanita McLaren.

That was compounded by the Labor government decision in 2012 to scrap the grandfather provisions, which saw a further 100,000 people forcibly moved on to Newstart.

The differences are stark – McLaren’s payment went from $748.10 per fortnight to $579.30. Where previously she could earn an additional $237.80 during the payments period before her supplement was affected, she could now earn only $104.

The gross income threshold was also slashed, from $2,088.85 to $1,576, while she lost the concession card. The cuts were exacerbated by other changes to the welfare scheme, including the scrapping of the schoolkids bonus, freezing the family tax benefit and forcing parents to wait a week between paid work and applying for benefits, which affects those able to obtain only contract work.

McLaren was forced to abandon the studies she had almost completed to better secure her long-term future employment and the work she was able to do was hampered by a lack of childcare options.

“Why on earth is it eight years old?” McLaren asked, referring to the cutoff point for the parenting payment. “Why not wait until they are in high school? In year 7, when they are a bit more independent? The cutoff date for my youngest turning eight – that was it.

“There was no negotiation. They turn eight, you get moved to Newstart, which you have to apply for yourself and then you get $100 less a fortnight. Just because that child was born on that date.”

Terese Edwards, the chief executive of the single mothers lobby group, said the move “condemned women who head up a single-parent family to a life of hardship as they contend with housing stress, deprivation, skip meals and forgo medical treatment”.

“Denying access to a parenting payment when a single parent’s youngest child turns eight years old is a violation of human rights, as defined by the core United Nations treaties including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women,” she said.

Edwards said the group – which has found 40% of sole-parent households are living below the poverty line in Australia – had been inundated by distressed mothers who slide into greater financial hardship when they are forced from a modest parenting payment to an unemployment benefit.

We know of women who return ... to the hands of the abuser because of the lack of assistance Terese Edwards, National Council of Single Mothers and their Children

“This includes women who have escaped domestic violence,” she said. “We know of women who return to place of abuse and to the hands of the abuser because of the lack of assistance.”

Australia signed and ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women optional protocol in 2008.

Beth Goldblatt, an associate professor at the University Of Technology Sydney’s faculty of law, said lodging a complaint with the UN was an option available to Australian women “if they think their rights under the international convention have been violated”.

“This becomes necessary when a person has tried every other means within the country to have their complaint considered,” Goldblatt said. “Juanita argues that single parents, most of whom are women, have consistently had their social security cut by consecutive governments in this country, leaving them and their children to face poverty in a country with the means to support people who are struggling.

“She argues that this violates her rights to social security, family benefits and non-discrimination. She can show that the organisations supporting her cause have made representations to parliament and raised the issue on all available platforms without success.”

Goldblatt said that because Australia does not have a bill of rights it is not an option to approach the courts over the issue.

McLaren said she did not expect a sudden turnaround in attitude from the government – or even a solution.



“The government is not going to look at this and say ‘wow you are telling us something we didn’t know’ they know this stuff already,” she said. “If anything, I am hoping it will get [to] women who are so downtrodden or have belief that they do deserve to be treated like this because somehow they are not good enough, or they asked for their circumstances – because you do start to believe that.”