- 10 May 2005 11:50
#634186
As far as I can see, the Coalition has failed to deliver on two most critical areas:
(a) providing real incentives for people returning, or seeking to return, to the workforce.
(b) addressing the skills shortage through boosting education, training and reskilling.
In area (a), as has been typical of the Liberal Party, instead of lowering effective marginal tax rates for those returning to work, or seeking to actually reform the welfare system, Costello has chosen to simply slug those out of work, as though they are simply too lazy to seek employment.
If a disabled person is judged to be able to work 16 hours a week by Centrelink, then they won't be eligible for a cent of disability support pension (as I understand it). Nevermind if this means they are only earning $320 a week, nevermind that there are no increased incentives for someone to employ them and that the government hasn't provided any policies to assist them into work. No carrot, plenty of stick.
In area (b), the government has just ignored any skills crisis whatsoever. What's worse, it has done this in the climate of slashed university spending, an attack on tertiary education culture and a failure to even acknowledge any problems in a system that they have gutted, and that has seen Australian universities having to lower standards to boost revenue from overseas students (the only way they can survive given Federal government funding cuts).
Also, of course, there's the broken promise on the Medicare threshold, and the commitment to sell off Telstra and each Australian's share in this vital piece of our infrastructure. But that was expected.
On the positive side, some tax rates have been reduced and the future fund doesn't sound like a bad idea (although, given the government's ability to weasel its way into most 'independent' boards, one has to wonder how many ethanol companies might be invested in by the statutory body looking after it).
That is all. What pisses me off most of all is that it seems the newspapers will focus on the tax cuts, without seeing this as a budget that, at a crucial point in our economic development, has utterly FAILED to address two crucial areas, taking retrograde steps or simply ignoring the problems.
(a) providing real incentives for people returning, or seeking to return, to the workforce.
(b) addressing the skills shortage through boosting education, training and reskilling.
In area (a), as has been typical of the Liberal Party, instead of lowering effective marginal tax rates for those returning to work, or seeking to actually reform the welfare system, Costello has chosen to simply slug those out of work, as though they are simply too lazy to seek employment.
If a disabled person is judged to be able to work 16 hours a week by Centrelink, then they won't be eligible for a cent of disability support pension (as I understand it). Nevermind if this means they are only earning $320 a week, nevermind that there are no increased incentives for someone to employ them and that the government hasn't provided any policies to assist them into work. No carrot, plenty of stick.
In area (b), the government has just ignored any skills crisis whatsoever. What's worse, it has done this in the climate of slashed university spending, an attack on tertiary education culture and a failure to even acknowledge any problems in a system that they have gutted, and that has seen Australian universities having to lower standards to boost revenue from overseas students (the only way they can survive given Federal government funding cuts).
Also, of course, there's the broken promise on the Medicare threshold, and the commitment to sell off Telstra and each Australian's share in this vital piece of our infrastructure. But that was expected.
On the positive side, some tax rates have been reduced and the future fund doesn't sound like a bad idea (although, given the government's ability to weasel its way into most 'independent' boards, one has to wonder how many ethanol companies might be invested in by the statutory body looking after it).
That is all. What pisses me off most of all is that it seems the newspapers will focus on the tax cuts, without seeing this as a budget that, at a crucial point in our economic development, has utterly FAILED to address two crucial areas, taking retrograde steps or simply ignoring the problems.
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