16-05-2014 11:58 AM - edited 16-05-2014 11:59 AM
I decided I should read up on the budget so I could comment. Found this article explained it well:
Budget 2014: the six graphs that matter for Australia
This is a horror budget for many – but the cuts overall are not as bad as in the past and, surprisingly, leave Wayne Swan with the record for wielding the budget axe
"On the broader economic front the budget suggests 2014-15 will be worse than this year. While the economy in 2013-14 is expected to grow by 2.75% (a slightly conservative estimate given annualised growth in the last half of 2013, which was 2.9%), in 2014-15 it’s expected to just trudge along by a mere 2.5%. Only in 2015-16 is the economy expected get back to close to trend growth of 3%.
Why are they so gloomy? Well it’s not households. Household consumption has been revised up since the Myefo – from growth of 2.75% next year to now 3% and 3.25% in 2015-16.
So we’re expected to keep shopping.
The problem is the end of the mining boom. This budget really throws off any hope that mining might sustain us. In the pre-election economic and fiscal outlook (Pefo) done just prior to the 2013 election, business investment was expected to grow in 2013-14 by 2%. The Myefo revised that down to a fall of 1.5% and the budget has dumped it even further –estimating a fall of 4%."
"This was going to be a horror budget. And it is. If you are intending to go to university, if you are under 30 and unemployed, if you are a family with a child over 6, if you go to GPs, you’ll going to be hit hard.
Family tax benefits are frozen to save $2.5bn over four years, the threshold for Family Tax Benefit cut from $150,000 to $1000,000 will save $1.2bn, cutting it for families with kids over six saves $1.9bn and the $7 co-payment for GP visits gathers in $3,5bn. The increase in costs to uni students through the deregulation of fees, the cutting of funding to unis and the changes the HECS/HELP repayments $3.2bn
But the biggest individual “saving” is through not increasing foreign aid as promised. This saves $7.6bn and is easily the laziest save any government can do."
"Hockey is not rushing back to surplus. Yes he’s putting on the fiscal breaks, but not like Costello did in 1996 to 1999, nor even like Keating did after the “banana republic” crisis in the late 1980s.
The budget deficit will shrink by on average 0.7% of GDP over the next four years. Costello trimmed it by 1% of GDP when he came in –but he was able to rely on much more revenue growth than Hockey.
Spending is expected to be cut each year by on average 0.3% over the next four years. Costello’s cuts to expenditure were double that."
Those baying for Hockey's blood should do a bit of back-reading.
on 18-05-2014 09:26 AM
We aren't alone in this CON..though our Country WAS in a better position than some.Our Government had a pre-planned scheme.
Revealed: The £43m paid by elite group of donors for access to top Tories including David Cameron
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/campaign-to-fix-the-debt/
The papers who pulled the phony opinion pieces are to be applauded for standing up to this type of crass manipulation.
With polling consistently showing that 90 percent of Americans want to preserve and strengthen Social Security, Fix the Debt has its work cut out for it pretending to represent the grassroots.
The truth is Fix the Debt is the latest effort by Wall Street billionaire Pete Peterson (who pledged a cool billion of his Blackstone Group fortune to the cause), to convince America that our deficit (which has been on a steep decline since peaking in 2009) is so out of control that it justified extreme budget cuts, including to Social Security and Medicare. Peterson gave $5 million to get Fix the Debt off the ground. Fix the Debt's members are a raft of Wall Street firms, like JP Morgan Chase who pitched in $500,000 and GE who contributed $1 million, and its "grassroots" are a series of politically-tied state-based PR firms on retainer who are required to line up a list of politicians and lobbyists, call them a "chapter," and work to make sure they get regular interviews in the local press. Here in Wisconsin, Fix the Debt's flack is Mark Graul, a Republican apparatchik best known for his false, racially-charged TV ad campaign against Judge Louis Butler in his 2008 race for Wisconsin Supreme Court.
Fix the Debt fails to tell students that its leaders, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, have a new budget plan that not only throws Grannie under the bus with cuts to Social Security and Medicare (which mean their kids and their grandkids will be working harder to support them in their old age), but also attacks college students by calling for higher interest rates on student loans and changing the law to allow those interest rates to kick in even before the student graduates from college (PDF, p. 30). Fix the Debt cries crocodile tears over the "generational inequities" of the federal budget, but fails to note that states spend billions on education.
While the nation hurtles to new budget deal deadlines in December and January that put Social Security and Medicare in danger, Fix the Debt is looking for a new press secretary to aid its effort to achieve a "Grand Bargain," along the lines of Simpson-Bowles -- budget cuts so steep they would cost America some four million jobs says the Economic Policy Institute. We can anticipate that the group will use some of its $40 million budget to ramp up its spin campaign on TV, in print ads, and radio.
Fortunately, more people are starting to catch on. The editorial board of the Georgetown Voice, the student newspaper of Georgetown University, urged student groups to do their homework before inviting groups to campus:
Given the lack of transparency in the structure and goals of Fix the Debt and, by proxy, The Can Kicks Back, it is of special importance that Georgetown student leadership take a closer and more critical look at the external groups they promote in the future. Had [student groups] done some research and looked past the glossy, misappropriated rhetoric and symbolism of the group they invited to the Hilltop, they would have found that Fix the Debt's agenda is undoubtedly anti-student and anti-poor, despite its claims to "promote generational equity."
Next time you see an op-ed from Fix the Debt or The Can Kicks Back (and there are many penned by Romano and his crew), give the editorial page editor a jingle and tell them that they have been hoodwinked by a reclusive billionaire named Pete Peterson and his Wall Street friends.
Learn more about Pete Peterson's chorus of calamity and decades long effort to gut Social Security and Medicare. Visit Pete Peterson on SourceWatch and our Nation package exposing Fix the Debt as an "astroturf supergroup." To hear Romano's side of the story, read "Conversations with Fix the Debt, Help Count the Pinocchios." This opinion piece was penned by Mary Bottari, no press secretary or Wall Street firm advised in its construction.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/15/the-can-kicks-back-fails_n_4790649.html
on 18-05-2014 10:40 AM
Another horrible bludget cut......
http://www.theage.com.au/business/big-donors-leave-heavy-lifting-to-mug-punters-20140516-38fcl.html
It was not only the poor, the aged, the sick, the weak and the disabled who copped it in the budget this week. It was homeless animals, too. They axed the Department of Agriculture's Australian Animal Welfare program. And a good thing, too. What did animals ever do for the Liberal Party? You won't see any hairy-tailed wombats propping up the bar at Joe Hockey's North Sydney Business Forum gala VIP dinners. Not of the marsupial variety. If animals want access to senior party figures they can bleep well do it the right way and creep under the back fence. That's right, hire a lobbyist, you animals.
Those who stump up the most money for influence achieve the best returns; those with the fattest and best-connected colonies of lobbyists lurking in Parliament House.
18-05-2014 10:55 AM - edited 18-05-2014 10:56 AM
Australia's Asylum seeker crisis may become real...Australians and Australian Native animals could need to seek Asylum elsewhere thanks to Tony Abbott's Coalition Government