Anyone who's had to deal with Centrelink knows their onerous requirements, including supplying details of your relationship status. ...

The welfare rights law where Australia lags the US by 50 years



Anyone who's had to deal with Centrelink knows their onerous requirements, including supplying details of your relationship status. This is especially true for people receiving the single parent's pension. Centrelink is determined that only the good kind of single parent receives the single parent's pension, and recipients can now be asked not just to prove that they are not in a relationship, but to supply sworn statements from third parties to verify their unattached status. Even given that, Centrelink still reserves for themselves the right to decide a sole parents pension recipient is in a relationship, and cut off their payments. It's a relic from the moral climate when sole mothers' benefits were introduced, and it was felt that whilst we had to keep those blameless mothers and children who'd been abandoned by their husbands from starvation, we certainly couldn't encourage feckless hussies to shack up and have illegitimate children with a succession of men, and so they would restrict the pension to the good kind of single mother, who devoted herself to a life of chaste motherhood in return for genteel poverty instead of outright destitution.

But of course, real life is far more complicated than that, and whilst Centrelink fraud inspectors are driving past the houses of single mothers to check there's no men's underwear brazenly hanging on the washing line, there's all sorts of other issues, not least of which is whether is someone assumed to be financially responsible for children that aren't theirs just because they're in a relationship with the children's mother?

Turns out the United States is ahead of this on this one. Over fifty years ahead, in fact. Before it was replaced in 1996 as part of Bill  Clinton's "Welfare to Work" drive, the main payment supporting American single parents was Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). AFDC was originally introduced in 1935, but came with what was known as the "man in the house" rule, that aid was conditional upon whether there was a man living in the home. This rule was used to police the sexual morality of women, particularly women of colour, by ensuring they weren't shacking up. The rule was struck down by the Supreme Court ruling of King v. Smith in 1968, which held that just because a man was having a sexual relationship with a woman in her home, he could counted as a substitute parent - and was under no legal obligation to support her children. From that point on, it wasn't enough for a woman just to be in a romantic relationship with a man; aid could only be restricted if a man was in a parental relationship with her children.

The question of a parental relationship is one that is completely pushed aside in Centrelink's rules on the single parent relationship. Of course there are many step parents who have loving parent-child relationships with children who aren't biologically theirs; but Centrelink assumes that the moment a person moves in with a parent, they automatically assume all financial responsibility for their children, regardless of whether that person likes or supports or loves the kids at all.

That, or Centrelink just enjoys its right to slut shame single mothers too much to give up now.

This is an issue that needs more public discussion. Heck it could be an issue that could even unite feminists and men's rights advocates. Feminists want an end to policies that shame and impoverish women; men's rights advocates rail against men being made to financially support kids that aren't theirs. Either way, it's a crappy situation and for once, it's an area of welfare reform where Australia really needs to catch up to the US.

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