womensphere

The Queensland Council of Social Service (QCOSS) says the Federal Government’s tax cuts for working mothers will help ease the financial burdens many families are experiencing.

Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan says under the Budget measures, working mothers will be between $3,500 and $7,000 a year better off.

QCOSS president Karyn Walsh says the tax relief is an incentive for mothers considering entering or returning to the workforce.

“It’s acknowledging that transition is really important to consider and certainly women make their own choices about how they balance work and life,” she said.

“It is an incentive in the sense that anyone who wants to go to work, they’ve got extra money to weigh up in terms of the costs of working versus the costs of not working.”

But some women are concerned that while the Government is promising them tax breaks, it is also cutting funding to a service which assists vulnerable working women.

The head of the Working Women’s Centre in Adelaide, Sandra Dann, says working mums will loose access to Working Women’s Centres in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Queensland.

Ms Dann says the centres are employment advocates for women who do not have unions and cannot afford lawyers.

“That’s the part that’s very confusing, that for the most vulnerable and most socially excluded workers in our community there’s a rhetoric on the one hand but in practice it appears that our funding will disappear,” she said.

A spokeswoman for Employment Minister Julia Gillard says the issue is a Budget matter and she has refused to comment.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/04/27/2228225.htm?section=australia