There are a whole lot of things that can be done to ease the cost of living pressures on households, argues Kamala Emanuel. It is a complete con to think that all we can possibly hope for is a tiny little one-off bonus.
Australian federal budgets
The Coalition and Labor are framing the budget with talk of the need for “budget repair”. John Quiggin says this is “a euphemism for cuts or austerity” and that alternative measures are needed.
The corporate media is giving the federal government’s latest budget a big thumbs up, despite its brazen hand-outs for billionaires and big corporations, writes Alex Bainbridge.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg's budget was a chance to reset Australia’s failed climate policies. But, as John Quiggin writes, it favoured polluting technologies over a clean energy future.
Bosses could hardly contain their glee at the 2020-21 budget. It is hardly surprising, writes Peter Boyle, given that it was a massive corporate handout.
The wealthy and corporations got a visit from Santa Claus, but the rest of us got Scrooged again on Budget night.
A windfall in tax income — derived in part from higher than expected royalties and corporate taxes in the mining sector, owing to higher prices for iron ore, coal and oil — provided ideal conditions for the government’s pre-election budget.
There was never a chance that Treasurer Scott Morrison would use this windfall to boost social spending — that just wouldn’t accord with the Malcolm Turnbull government’s “trickle down” economics.
The recent federal budget announced a terrible new policy — drug testing 5000 new recipients of Youth Allowance or Newstart. The drugs tested for will be cannabis, methamphetamine and MDMA.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has defended the policy as "aimed at stabilising the lives of people with alcohol and drug abuse problems by encouraging them to participate in treatment as part of their Job Plan". At the same time, people with diagnosed substance abuse disorders have been excluded from disability benefits.
Complaints by conservative commentators that Treasurer Scott Morrison and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull have delivered a “Labor budget” show how low expectations are that any federal government in Australia will deliver a budget aiming to advance genuine social justice in this country.
It is just as well we are so alert these days to “fake news”, otherwise some might actually believe media claims the federal government has delivered a “left-leaning” budget.
The Anti-Poverty Network South Australia released the statement below on its Facebook page on May 10 in response to the federal budget, which included a series of attacks on welfare recipients.
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About 100 members of Fair Go for Pensioners (FGFP) rallied in Melbourne on May 25 to call on political parties to reverse severe funding cuts to welfare, health and education in the federal budget which will condemn more pensioners and low-income families to living below the poverty line.
FGFP president Roger Wilson said the budget focus on giving the business sector generous tax cuts came at the expense of slashing services for the most vulnerable — pensioners, low-income families, the unemployed and those fearing homelessness.
The Malcolm Turnbull Coalition government's economic spin is that they are managing a “transition” from “strong resource investment-led growth to broader-based drivers of economic activity”.
This, it claims in the 2016 budget papers, is a transition to more “labour-intensive sectors, such as services”. Hence the Coalition's mantra: “Growth and jobs”. Sounds nice, but what does this mean for the different classes in Australia?
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