Allan Leach, 67, drives a school bus at Cundletown, NSW, near Taree. At home, he cares for wife Lorraine, also 67, who is very disabled by extensive osteoporosis and a bad back.

Allan’s a down-to-earth fellow who seems to have the work–care balance cinched; it’s the unfair tax treatment of working carers that’s his ‘biggest gripe’.

“I work about three and a half hours a day. I’m a school bus driver. See, you’re allowed to work to 25 hours a week on the carer payment.

“It took us three goes to get it [the Carer Allowance] from Centrelink. See, they didn’t think she was as disabled as she was—didn’t get how bad she was. We had to go through their whole rigmarole: documents, doctors’ reports, specialists reports, then they didn’t believe the specialists and we had to see one of ‘their’ specialists…

“Lorraine can’t even get round the house without a walking frame. She’s pretty fragile. She got a fracture from a fall going in to hospital for a visit recently; then just the other day the fridge door fell off its hinges and nearly landed on her. She was lucky there.”

“Lorraine’s only four foot ten, you know. I’m always needed; she’s got to be helped all the time. But she cooks okay.”

Allan reckoned that he’d been on the Carer Allowance for a couple of years now; Lorraine has been disabled for six or seven years. Allan has always worked as a driver: trucks and lorries, then buses. The casual job as school bus driver fit well with his caring role, he said.

We asked Allan about the bus driver’s life and what the school kids were like. He laughed and said some were ‘pretty bad’.

We suggested that at least it would be better than long-haul trucking, given his caring role, and Allan laughed, “No, trucking would be better. You’d be on your own, at least—no screaming kids!”

He said he had been driving buses for 10 years.

“My hours are 7.45 to 10 am and 2.45 to 4.10 pm. I only work about three and a half hours, you see. I cut it back from four hours, gives me a bit more time to get home. It’s more relaxed.

“Me and Lorraine just take it slow. Go out shopping together, when I’m not driving. See, I go home between the morning bus and the afternoon bus.

“It’s all working out, for now.

“My biggest gripe is that I have to pay tax on the Carer’s Allowance because I work. I wouldn’t have to pay tax on it if I didn’t work, but because I work, they [the tax office] add it up—the allowance and my income—and I pay tax on the whole lot. I work, and they rip me off.

“If you’re working and caring, you pay tax on the whole amount, see, and if you don’t have money taken out of your allowance for tax, you end up out of pocket. That’s happened to me before too. So I’m losing money out of my carer’s payment because I work.

“I sent an email to Wayne Swan [the Federal Treasurer] about it in January… I’m still waiting for a response. I sent another one yesterday.”

“See, you’re 67, they want you to keep working, but they penalise you for it!

“I lose some of my pension because I’m working. They reduce Lorraine’s as well—she’s on the old age pension—because I’m working. That’s not right. They shouldn’t touch hers, I reckon.

“And you can’t claim for equipment [as a tax deduction], unless it’s more than $1500. I called the ATO to ask.

“Now, Lorraine can’t sleep lying down. She has to sleep partly sitting up, so I had to buy a hospital bed for her. That was $1200—at a discount! And I couldn’t claim for that.

“Had to pay to have ramps put in. You know, home modifications. And hand rails in the bathroom. That was over $200, but you couldn’t claim it on your tax.

“And we have to have a special volume phone, you know, and they charge you extra for that every month. And you can’t claim it.

“It’s just cost, cost, cost all the time, and we don’t get no help from nobody.”

Allan said that at the moment, they were managing, because the house was paid off—but barely.

“I know there are people in worse situations than ours. You see it on the telly—the poor kids. It’s good to help overseas, with the earthquake and things, but you have to think they should look to take care of their own first.”

We mentioned that Government ministers like Jenny Macklin seemed to be making ‘a lot of the right noises’ about supporting carers and asked for Allan’s view.

“Sure, they make a lot of noises but they don’t do anything for nobody. They did nothing in the Budget for anybody.”