The Albanese Labor Government is committed to supporting Australia’s 3 million unpaid carers.

We are continuing to support carers through our social security system, with $11 billion per year provided for the Carer Payment and Carer Allowance.

We are investing over $907 million over four years for carer support services, including Carer Gateway.

On 10 December 2024 the government launched a new National Carer Strategy, the first new strategy for carers since 2011, which is Labor’s plan to ensure that Australia’s carers are better recognised, respected, valued and supported. It also aims to have the role of unpaid carers better understood.

We also released an Action Plan to support the strategy, which includes:

• $19.8 million to extend the Young Carer Bursary Program and Young Carers Network, and increase the bursary amount to support young carers to continue their education whilst caring;
• $6.7 million to provide up to 10,000 additional phone counselling sessions per year through Carer Gateway, and extending the opening hours of the Gateway; and
• Extending the Carer Inclusive Workplace Initiative for another year to continue to assist employers develop and adopt practices to support employees with caring responsibilities to enter and remain in the workforce.

Labor is also making changes to the Carer Payment Participation Limit to give carers greater flexibility in how they manage their study and work commitments with their caring responsibilities. This includes:

• Changing the 25 hour per week participation limit for Carer Payment recipients to instead allow them up to 100 hours over a four week period, and removing restrictions on travel, education and volunteering activities from the participation limit;
• Introducing a six-month suspension period for recipients who work over the new flexible limit, meaning they will no longer be cancelled and will not need to reapply to access the Carer Payment; and
• Allowing use of single Temporary Cessation of Care days for one-off or occasional instances where carers need greater flexibility in the number of participation hours they use.

It is only Labor Governments’ who focus the nation’s attention on the important contribution carers make to our society and the Albanese Government will continue to value and support our nation’s carers.

We are waiting to hear from the Coalition.

We are waiting to hear from the Greens.