budget

Sarah Hathway from Socialist Alliance was declared elected to Windermere Ward of the City of Greater Geelong on June 28. Sue Bull reports.

Graph showing who benefits from stage 3 tax cuts

“Stop the cuts,” is the usual left response at budget time. But on the eve of the first budget to be delivered by the Anthony Albanese Labor government, there are three cuts we should support. Peter Boyle reports.

Graham Matthews argues that now that the National Disability Insurance Scheme has matured, the federal government wants to disown it, down-size and destroy it.

After eliminating almost all its generous pandemic spending measures, the federal government has indicated it will soft-peddle on further cuts in the May 11 budget. Neville Spencer reports.

The Spanish Socialist Workers' Party/Unidas Podemos coalition government has launched its 2021 draft budget to great fanfare, writes Dick Nichols.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese’s budget reply speech failed to offer an alternative course to the Coalition government’s gas and arms export-based vision, argues Peter Boyle.

Tuesday’s budget is on everybody’s mind. Most people will be looking for whatever life buoys Treasury throws, writes Suzanne James.

Angry Bananas in Pajamas on placards at rally against cuts

Unions have condemned the federal government's decision to cut a further $84 million from funding for the ABC in the federal budget announced on May 8.

The budget confirmed the government has frozen the indexation of ABC funding to effectively cut that amount over three years. These latest cuts come on top of the $254 million the Coalition government has already removed from the ABC's revenue since 2014.

Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan fronted the media on April 6 with the news that the state’s economy is in a turmoil not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The recently elected Labor government has warned that its first budget will be “tough and uncompromising”, though tough and uncompromising to whom is yet to be seen.

Meals on Wheels. Teacher training, after-school, and summer educational programs. The National Endowment for the Arts. The Appalachian Regional Commission. The National Institutes of Health (NIH). The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 

The Labor Party announced a series of “savings” measures on June 10, including $1 billion worth of Abbott/Turnbull cuts that had previously been blocked in the Senate. It has tried to make the attacks appear palatable by claiming they are directed at higher income families. However the truth is they reaffirm that a future Labor government's direction will be more about cutting government spending than raising revenue from the big end of town. Further, they will have bigger impacts on ordinary workers than appears evident at first glance.
Remember last year when federal Treasurer Scott Morrison, picking up where Joe Hockey left off, declared that we had a spending problem not a revenue problem? That seems like a long time ago now. They did try to increase revenues by floating an increase in the GST but soon after came the revelation that 600 of Australia's biggest companies paid no tax and hundreds more pay less that the 30% they could be paying. This is all the more galling when you consider that the rate has been cut from the 48% it had been in the early 1980s. And then came the Panama Papers!