However the idea appears unlikely to win any votes.
Three intelligent women, who are sole parent single mums are ticked off.
Helen has a six-year-old and juggles being a single mum with her lecturing job at Melbourne Uni.
More stories from Today TonightTanishka is self-employed with a nine-year-old daughter, and Libby has a three-year-old and is looking for work.
100,000 sole parents share a battle that just got much harder, so hard the Gillard Government has been warned its actions towards single parents may violate human rights as defined by the core UN treaties.
During the Howard Government years single parents were eligible for welfare until their child turned sixteen. The latest Gillard Budget has cut that in half, and support will now end when the child turns eight.
“I would be very happy to hand my nine-year-old with her highly infectious bacterial infection to Julia GIllard to take into work - and see how she would go as a sole parent in that position, and then take a quarter of the payment we live on,” Tanishka said.
Those on parenting payments will be left $60 poorer per week when their child turns eight, being forced off their current $324 weekly payment to the lower Newstart Allowance of $265.
Dr Cassandra Goldie of the Australian Council of Social Services has this concern - “we can afford to be helping these sole parents who are really wanting to be out there in paid work, providing them with better support and not cutting their income at a time when the only thing we're going to do is make them poorer.”
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The Government hopes to save close to $700 million over four years by pushing parents off the pension and onto the dole when their child turns eight.
“The government justified it by saying they’re helping people, those parents, find jobs. Well the data shows that that's in fact not the case, this is going to make it harder for people because they're going to be losing income,” Dr Goldie said.
Teenage single mums don't escape the Government's tough love either. It's ordering thousands of teenage mums back to school - and there are no excuses.
More stories from reporter Clare Brady
Australia is home to about 11,000 teenage mums, and now these young mums are being told to learn, or else.
Melanie Ziebell loves her kids, but she hated school. She's seventeen, left school in Year 9 and doesn't want to go back.
But like other young mums who dropped out of school to have their babies, she may not have a choice. If they refuse to go back, teenage mums could be stripped of their $625.90 fortnightly welfare payments.
Childcare minister Kate Ellis defends the policy that was largely designed in the Coalition years.“What this basically means is that every parent who has come onto this payment since 2006 has already been operating under these requirements, and this means that there's one set of rules for everybody, which I think most people would argue is pretty fair,” Ellis said.
Teen parents currently out of work and on welfare must go back to school. “We recognise that no one benefits from a cycle of welfare dependency, we don’t think a child should grow up in a house where nobody is working,” Ellis added.
Despite Today Tonight's repeated requests for interviews on their new policies both Childcare Minister Kate Ellis and Employment Minister Bill Shorten declined.
However they're still happy to say to these mum's that once their babies turn one, it's back to school, and that is that.
Danielle Troy is nineteen, raising her two children. Unlike some young mums, she's worked since her daughter was three-months-old.
“I missed out on a few milestones of my daughter. I missed her first crawling, I missed her first tooth coming through, I wasn't there for some of it,” Danielle said.
However the young mum makes juggling an art. She's just completed her criminology degree online and is applying for a position with the police. But regardless, she warns against forced education.
“That child is going to be the one that suffers. For want of a better word, it’s barbaric,” Danielle said.
Mature or teenage - for mums going it alone, life just got a whole lot harder.
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