A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article titled Fifteen things that are more important than slogans about innovation. It is informative to measure how the budget and recent events have addressed these issues.
1.Climate change and the environment
Climate change was not even mentioned. There was no new money for climate initiatives and the only mention renewable energy got was to confirm that $1.3 billion in funds would be stripped from the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.
Much fanfare was made by Greg Hunt about an extra $171 million in funding for the Great Barrier Reef except the money comes from cuts to other environmental programs.
On Wednesday, some government MPs recommended a rule that would mean green groups losing their tax deductibility status for donations unless each year they spend at least a quarter of the money they receive on “environmental remediation works” such as tree plantings.
2.Health
After having previously ripped out substantial funding for preventive health programs, the only budget measure in this regard is the usual increase in tobacco excise. They cut $21.2 million from grants under the Practice Incentives Program which provides payments to general practice including for asthma and diabetes care.
The $2.9 billion given back to hospital funding is very much a stop-gap measure to get the federal government through the upcoming election. The problem has been deferred briefly.
The freezing of the MBS remains as does the ‘zombie proposal’ to increase PBS co-payments.
$17 million will be saved by scrapping the Child Dental Benefits Scheme and replacing it with a ‘new’ Child and Adult Public Dental Scheme.
The decision by some pharmacies to wear the cost of offering discounted prescriptions will save the government $373 million over 4 years as it would take concession patients an extra 11 scripts to reach their safety net.
3.Education
The Coalition has said it will give $1.2 billion for needs-based school funding between 2018-2020 which falls well short of the $4.5 billion promised by Labor between 2018-19 as part of the Gonski reform model.
The higher education reforms that were announced in the 2014 budget, which included the deregulation of university fees, will now be delayed for another year.
There are also cuts of $152.2 million over four years to the Higher Education Participation Program, which funds universities to bring in students from the lowest socio-economic levels and $20.9 million over the next four years to the Promotion of Excellence in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education Program.
The budget proposes little new for early learning, with the government deferring implementation of its Jobs for Families Package giving a budget saving of $43.4 million in 2016-17 and $1.15 billion in 2017-18.
We have morphed from Canberra keeping out of the running of schools to proposals to pay teachers for performance and a direction to focus on explicit instruction and graduation tests.
4.Inequality
People who earn over $80,000 will get a small tax cut of 4.5c for each dollar earned between $80,000 and $87,000. Those on very high incomes of over $180,000 will also have the 2% levy removed.
The wealthy will still benefit from overly generous property concessions and businesses will see their tax reduced by up to 5% costing us an estimated $55 billion over the next decade.
The last two budgets locked in massive cuts to schools and hospitals, $13 billion in cuts to payments and $1 billion in cuts to services for people who bear the brunt of inequality. This budget has not only retained these cuts but has slashed an additional $3 billion in cuts to support payments and essential services. This budget, like its predecessors, entrenches inequality rather than fighting it.
5.Domestic violence
The budget is confirmation that the Commonwealth government is more concerned with threats abroad and public violence than the scourge of family violence permeating every corner of the Australian community – we are ignoring known threats to investigate potential ones.
In comparison with the $100 million allocated to family violence, the budget allocates $30 billion for national security, with the promise of “keeping Australians safe”.
It is estimated that violence against women between 2014-15 cost the nation $21.6 billion.
There was no restoration of funding for community legal aid.
6. Research
The Federal Government has cut $9.5million from the Rural Research and Development for Profit Program (RRDPP) whose role is to research new technologies for the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors. It was set up last year as part of the Coalition’s long-awaited promise to spend $100 million on agricultural research.
The Coalition promised that amount of funding for rural research and development before the 2013 election but subsequently wiped out more than that amount through cuts to Co-operative Research Centres and the CSIRO.
The money will be redirected to fund feasibility studies for more dams.
7.Indigenous disadvantage
Last year the government published a Review of Higher Education Access and Outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People.
“… the Panel found that the Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme – Tertiary Tuition (ITAS-TT) program provided tutoring support that was highly valued by students in helping them to succeed in their studies. It could be further strengthened through changes to the eligibility criteria and possible development of a national tutor database to support the program.”
Rather than following the recommendation to expand this very successful program, Morrison dumped it altogether, redirecting $10 million to a new Indigenous Student Success Program which will be outcomes based and give higher education institutions with higher Indigenous completions more money.
Indigenous Business Australia will lose $23.1 million in funding. The government said the money will be going back to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and redirected to “Indigenous entrepreneurs”.
$15 million will be spent on “raising awareness of the constitutional recognition referendum and national community forums on the issue.”
8.Youth unemployment
Businesses will be given an upfront payment of $1000 for taking on an intern for as little as four weeks. This presents a clear opportunity for business to fill potential job vacancies with subsidised, and therefore very much cheaper, unprotected interns.
9.Homelessness and housing affordability
The previous Abbott government cancelled both the low-income Social Housing Initiative and the moderate-income National Rental Affordability Scheme.
Morrison’s budget did not contain any meaningful affordable housing measures – no action for the 105,000 people experiencing homelessness in prosperous Australia, or the 200,000 households waiting for social housing, or the 1 million households in housing stress.
But wealthy investors will continue to enjoy excessive property tax concessions.
10.Positive Aging
$1.2 billion has been cut from aged care.
11.NDIS
The Government has found $2.1 billion in savings from the welfare budget which it will move into a new NDIS savings fund.
The Government also expects to save $62 million by assessing 30,000 Disability Support Pension recipients’ capacity to work.
12.Tax avoidance
Morrison announced in the budget that 390 new staff would be part of a 1300-strong “tax avoidance taskforce” looking at tax compliance by multinational companies operating in Australia.
The price tag for the staffing boost is listed in the budget papers as $680 million over four years. I wonder what the price tag was for the 4,700 redundancies.
13.Corruption and political donations
The banks will now pay ASIC to regulate them.
14.Refugees
Peter Dutton has descended to new levels of bastardry. He accuses advocates of encouraging self-harm. He denies medical treatment to detainees. He refuses to let any refugees go to New Zealand and he ignores the PNG court ruling to close the detention centre.
15.NBN
The budget is completely silent on the changes required to keep the NBN delivering its original promise and timely completion.
It reconfirms the government’s capped investment, with $8.83 billion as the last tranche of funding to flow to nbn co. during 2016-17. This will force nbn co. to seek alternative methods of financing through private equity or debt financing to meet the future operational and capital expenditure required to complete the network’s roll-out.
All in all, an uninspiring tinkering budget which will do very little to improve our society.
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