Much of the goodwill generated by the Turnbull government's generally well-received package of childcare reforms is at risk of being dissipated by rising community disquiet over moves to link them to welfare cuts.
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Among the measures the government has said it intends to combine with the childcare changes is an increase in the age of eligibility for unemployment benefits from 22 to 25.
Under 25s, who will have to wait for four weeks after leaving a job before accessing income support, will now be placed on the $219 a week Youth Allowance as opposed to the $264 a week Newstart allowance. Both benefits are paid fortnightly.
Leaving aside the fact this appears to stretch the definition of "youth", generally accepted as applying to under 21-year-olds, to beyond breaking point, it will cut the incomes of those affected by $45 a week or 17 per cent.
It would be hard to argue this will not result in significant hardship for a section of the community already struggling to get by on a benefit that could neither be described as indulgent or even generous.
The same has been said, in some cases with diminished veracity, of the other cuts. They include the abolition of the energy supplement (worth up to $7 a week), the capping of government funded and employer-paid parental leave at 20 weeks a year and stopping the pensions of Australians who travel for more than six weeks overseas.
There is no doubt that in some households the $7 a week represented by the energy supplement, while negligible in the eyes of many families, could be hard to come by.
It is also true that as Australia is a multicultural society with many citizens who were born overseas and still have family off-shore extended stays abroad aren't necessarily about trips to the French Riviera or Las Vegas.
It is the capping of both government and employer funded parental leave at 20 weeks that has aroused the most ire however.
Under the old arrangement workers covered by an employer scheme were able to tack that on to the government's 18-week parental scheme, a practice condemned by "lifters not leaners" former treasurer, Joe Hockey, as "double dipping".
Double dipping is a topic our US ambassador knows a lot about. He is in receipt of both a $360,000 per annum diplomatic salary and a parliamentary pension estimated at about $90,000.
The government's apparent hypocrisy on issues such as this and its determination to claw back money from the welfare sector to pay for the childcare reforms, which include the very welcome abolition of the $7,500 rebate cap that often left families seriously out of pocket towards the end of the financial year, has sent mixed messages to the electorate.
Is this a case of a government slipping bad, and possibly ideologically driven, policy through on the back of good? If each measure is worth implementing on its own, let the Government argue those merits, rather than using the current proposal that attempts to force through one in exchange for receiving the other.
