OK, I'll bite... no one else has mentioned anything about it. In clear contrast to the last budget and it's discussion here http://forums.silverstackers.com/topic-1442-australian-budget-speech.html there's been no interest in this topic. In fact no one even seems to have watched it...nor the opposition's reply. All anyone seems to be talking about is ; 1)how a nervous Treasurer crushed a glass in his hand during a radio interview the next day (Yes, I saw the video and realise this didn't happen ), and 2) how the treasurer considers a $150K/year household as 'middle class' fact is...I didn't watch it either. Arguably the most important policy announcment a government can make and no one either cares or believes what's being said. So here's my questions; to those that watched.... what's in it for us? to those that tuned out.... why?
didn't watch it - was away for a couple of days and completely forgot it was even on. as to the $150k/year being middle class - maybe that's not a completely ridiculous estimate given that you need an income pretty close to that to be able to buy a median house in sydney these days.
I was wondering why noone mentioned it too . I personally dont care thats why i didnt mention it theres sfa you can do .I was expecting pages of complaints but it didnt happen
I guess people are thinking "what can we believe?" I love it how in this country the personal tax bands are never adjusted for inflation which of course leads to bracket creep. When income taxes were first introduced they were around 1%, look at them now.
Watched and if you examined it clearly it was full of misdirection like cut 2b in defense add 2b for asylum seekers, cut 2b in tax benefit for 150k earners add 2b foreign aid and add 1.5b mental health (for 5yrs) cut 690m from psychologist visits etc etc
The hype about the 150,000 was interesting. I'm all for a safety net but why anyone on that much needs anything is beyond me. Abbott must be a bit of a closet socialists.
Well I don't even have a TV so can't watch the budget I briefly looked at the stuff they suggested in the budget and the only thing which affected me was the HECS repayment which I didn't care anyway as I'd rather put any money I have into Silver rather than HECS repayments. As for the 150k middle class bit, I don't see what the outrage about that is. This value is a family combined value so really only 75k per adult in a normal household. Of course single earning households wouldn't be anywhere near 150k unless they were really well off. Anyway here's what a basic outline/key initiatives of the budget is and my takes on it: Seems like a waste of money since 'government training' is mostly crap... Sounds pretty good in theory, if they mean the TAFE courses or stuff for tradies. I don't even... apparently paying people to work isn't enough, you have to reward them. I think I'm in the wrong line of work. Anyway all this sounds nice but probably has no substance. That's nice...36 billion in actually bringing our country up to speed with our overseas counterparts. Perhaps now we will actually have decent trains in Sydney? One can dream. I don't get why they're duplicating the pacific highway either, there are so many more congested roads along Sydney than the pacific highway -_-? Perhaps now our hospitals may finally stop leaking water from the roofs and have enough doctors to serve patients without 5 hour waiting lines at emergency rooms? 2.2 billion dollars on national mental health reform what the f*ck is that? Brainwashing? Or are we talking about the mentally ill here or is this about depression/dementia etc? No elaboration what so ever, probably more fluff spending. Under 1 billion dollars spent on stuff that everybody would benefit from, typical. Force us to pay exorbitant fees to do anything or buy insurance. What a joke. Top performing teachers? HAHAHAHA. Find me one top performing school that doesn't have students running off to tutors. How the heck are they going to select the top teachers, I bet there's going to be more rorting and it'd cost more to enforce too. I agree with spending money to support disabled children but the value is way too low as compared to rewarding teachers who may or may not have done anything. An extra $300 a year, ohhhhh that is so much! Not. Instead of addressing the high cost of living (actual issue) they delay the inevitable by pursuing this strategy..cute. This is good, regional areas always get left out in budgets and what not. Pretty generic budget, nothing much to talk about I bet that's why nobody cares. That or people just know our government is so bad at anything it doesn't matter what they say. Source: http://www.budget.gov.au/2011-12/content/at_a_glance/html/at_a_glance.htm (Note how they have 2010-11 Commonwealth Budget on the title; that's how efficient and good the government are at doing things; promise the world & deliver nothing)
Just shuffling the deck chairs around again. Rarely matters who is in power. the budget reply condensed into 3 words was 'have an election'. Like Tony would do anything different. (for the record when i am forced to vote i vote liberal over labor for lack of a solid libertarian candidate.) As for being 'rich' on 150k. I wouldn't consider that rich. I do however, feel that you should not be getting welfare. Even though they just redirected the funding elsewhere, ending/limiting middle class welfare is a good thing. I also heard calls to arms about a special 'Sydney break' for Sydney people due to it being much more costly to live in Sydney than elsewhere. Here is a hint if you live in Sydney and think its too expensive. Move. Relocate. I would be absolutely appalled if this went through and I am disgusted enough that it is even being talked about by people. Lets provide more of an incentive for people to cram in cities and discourage them from moving out to rural areas. As for how it will effect you, to be honest I don't think it will change too much. I think if you have kids over 16 there are some sweeteners. The flood levy is the biggest thing that will hit. But as usual if you are white and earning a half decent wage with no kids/dependents you get sfa and taxed to the hilt.
Great point. My kids are in a private school, and the amount of home work required is substantial. Sometime I wonder what they actually do in school, given how much time I spend helping after school. I reckon I should line up for the teaching bonus. I loved Abbott's comment of the set top boxes. "Building the entertainment revolution". There is a pink batts rort style disaster going to happen all over again.
I didn't watch it because the speech is always full of silly theatrics. I read the published version instead. As for what was actually contained in the budget: +1 for increased mental health funding - its cheaper in the long run to treat mental health issues than it is to pick up the pieces afterwards, +1 for foreign aid spending - again, its cheaper in the long run to assist developing nations become self sufficient than it is to deal with the effects of extreme poverty (and +1 to Julie Bishop for smacking the Liberals into line on foreign aid), +1 for winding back middle class welfare - a lot of it is a holdover from Howard-Costello era vote buying and is unnecessary, +1 for increased spending in regional areas - better services in regional hubs make them more attractive and take pressure off cities. What's in it for me? Not a lot. I wasn't expecting any massive tax breaks or cash bribes and I wasn't disappointed. I say this in a lot of the threads on the philosophy of government and I'll say it again: I don't have a problem paying tax, provided I get good value for money. TBH, this budget was mostly focused on returning to surplus next year and as such it was pretty boring. I think that is a good thing - budgets are supposed to be boring. Everyone still seems to have these expectations that federal budgets should be like the Howard-Costello gameshows where piles of cash prizes handed out to lucky citizens. Those expectations are flawed. Either the government takes a lot of tax and build lots of infrastructure or it takes less tax and people can figure things out for themselves. Massive surpluses redistributed as hand-outs with no infrastructure spending means the government is taxing people too much, i.e. we're collectively getting ripped off.
Amen to that! Not dealing with chronic mental illness is really starting to put a strain on the legal system (police, courts, corrections etc) and it's spilling over into 'petty' crime eg. vagrancy, drugs, theft, vandalism, etc and spilling out into suburbia. It's really becoming hard for the general public to ignore the problem when there's an incident in their suburb or outside their front door.
Yeah there's always a crazy dude or woman in the CBD or heck even on the trains at night. Even though I agree with spending on this area I just don't believe that our government would be able to fix anything at all. The problem I see with this is that the majority of the people with issues are from poor backgrounds (i know, generalization) and it all stems back to welfare and their declining lifestyle leading to mental problems. Better than doing nothing though, at least they're funding something. Would love to see this actually make a difference but I'm pessimistic. Having said that, I hope that they don't put 90% of the mental health budget into treating 'depression'. So tired of people who say they are remotely unhappy claiming to have depression. There are definitely more pressing mental health issues to worry about imo.
Didn't watch the budget speach, but happened to see Abbott's response. Anyone mention printing more money, funding multiple and concurrent military interventions, foreign central banks buying gold, foreign speculation in the real estate market, preserving liberties of the citizenry? No. Why? Take money from here, dole it out over there, employ a bunch of bureaucrats in the process. Yawn. Nothing will change within our current control structure. We all swim within the same pool, confined by its edges and all these politicians do is add a little colour to the water now and then . . . mostly of the steaming yellow variety. The reason that there is a minority government with no clear mandate to do anything, is because society has had enough of being p****ed on by these politicians. Personally, I'm not looking forward to the introduction of naked body scanners at the airports next year, I dislike the forced medication of the population with adding flouride to the water supply, and could not careless what benefits they want to bestow on me or not. They are always and everywhere the problem, not the solution.
I (unfortunately) have some insight in this area and its a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario. The vast majority of the people sleeping rough every night have mental health and drug/alcohol issues. In some cases the drugs and alcohol are used to self-medicate because those people have slipped outside the safety net and can't easily access medical treatment and in some cases the addiction to drugs and alcohol exacerbate existing mental health conditions (like schizophrenia). Whatever it was that kicked things off to begin with, both factors feed off each other and the person ends up on a downward spiral into abject poverty. There is also the fact that mental health problems aren't specific to any particular demographic or socio-economic status. They're actually a series of conditions which are pretty evenly distributed throughout the population but without effective treatment even people who are comfortably well off to begin with end up slipping further and further until they end up alone and poor. That's where we get the image of a crazy tramp from. We don't notice those people while they're a successful lawyer in the first stages of Alzheimer's disease or a slightly quirky student with an undiagnosed case of schizophrenia. IMHO, health funding needs to find a balance between allocating money for physical conditions and mental health conditions because unless we take a whole-of-life approach to heath services we're just going to end up in permanent crisis mode, patching up "crazy people" when they cut themselves, or get into a fight with someone they believe is an evil unicorn or are about to die of malnutrition etc. Indeed. Its also nice that both sides of politics acknowledge that adequate mental health funding has been lacking for too long.
The WA premier mentioned paying the moving costs to bring skilled eastern staters to WA to work in the mining industry.
