The report titled 'Growing disquiet in Labor over Welfare Reform' on 7:30 report investigated the cuts to single parent's payment under the Gillard government. These cuts aroused the anger of single parents nationwide and 7:30 sought to investigate why. It came to the conclusion that the government should not have made these cuts. However, it did not give enough weight to the argument that was not against the cuts.
The report was centred around a single mother, Jacqueline Knox, who explains how hard is it for her to raise her two children by herself. Single parents are in varying financial and socioeconomic positions. By using one single mother as the basis to support the argument that the cuts not should be made, the report is based on the untrue premise that all single parents are struggling, and that therefore all single parents should not have a cut to welfare payments. There may well be some who are relatively well off and have no need for welfare payments in the first placed. This invokes sympathy in the audience, possibly in an attempt to a arouse the anger of the community at large.
Six out of seven people who expressed views in the report were against. The only person who did not express her view that she was against or for the cuts was economist Judith Sloan. However, she said that it is a matter to encouraging people to go to work. 7:30 appeared to dismiss her argument by using feminist researcher Eva Cox to dispute her argument that the cuts will provide an incentive for single parents to go to work. This may well be true, but, Cox, herself being a single mother would be expected to have bias towards single mothers.
While the report seeks to make a valid criticism of cuts to existing welfare payments, the report relied on a disproportionate number of parties against the cuts and a personal story which may not represent that of the group concerned. This makes the report sensationalist, rather than well investigated.
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