There is a well-known internet meme that quotes Britain’s war-time leader Winston Churchill’s response to a proposition that arts funding should be cut in favour of the war effort. His retort was: “Then…
How grim a message is the budget inadvertently sending?
Maria Schaefer Photography
The reality of the 2014 budget is now pretty clear, not just its specific provisions but the kind of nation it wants Australia to become. How it affects culture relates not just to this or that cut to…
Industry assistance cuts will have long-term impacts on Australia’s international competitiveness.
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The 2014 Budget has been variously celebrated and reviled as a “budget for corporate Australia”. But this assessment is based on the premise that corporate tax cuts and infrastructure spending will provide…
As part of the Liberal government’s slash-and-burn budget on Tuesday night was the surprise announcement that the Australian Interactive Games Fund was to be cut, effective immediately. First announced…
The budget: more that we wanted, less than we need.
Lukas Coch/AAP
This week’s budget was clearly highly political. The question is what its economic impact will be. My overall assessment is that the Abbott government has burnt too much political capital for too little…
Taxes - and what we actually should use them for - are routinely ignored.
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Joe Hockey’s first budget does not contain much tax reform, in spite of headlines on the “temporary budget repair levy”. It does contain some very big cuts to spending in the short and longer term - consistent…
The government seems indifferent to inequality.
Lukas Coch/AAP
Over the last few years our economic debate has focused on the budget deficit and government debt, displacing other aspects of economic policy. To Labor’s cost Wayne Swan made the deficit the centrepiece…
Policy measures have failed to understand why unemployed and disaffected youth are the way they are.
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The 2014 federal budget implemented a so-called crackdown on what Minister for Social Services Kevin Andrews calls young people who are content to “sit on the couch at home and pick up a welfare cheque…
The policy idea seems to be that poverty will force young people to work, but what if there are too few jobs?
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In the lead-up to the 2014-15 budget, Australians heard the federal government’s mantra that the “adults are back in charge”. However, the government’s approach to young people has been vague since its…
Treasurer Joe Hockey warned Australians that ‘the age of entitlement is over’ – a promise that certainly came true for young Australians in the federal budget.
AAP/Lukas Coch
The 2014-15 federal budget continues the deconstruction of Australia’s post-war welfare state. In fact, the budget takes it a step further, particularly for the young. People under the age of 30 will now…
Prime Minister Tony Abbott on the day his government handed down its first Budget.
AAP/Lukas Coch
Suzanne Cory, WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research)
When the freshly-minted Prime Minister Tony Abbott declined for the first time since 1931 to appoint a science minister as part of his Cabinet in September last year, he did so having made an election…
The new Extended Medicare Safety Net will no longer provide patients with protection against high medical costs.
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Buried in the details of the health budget are some changes to Medicare not widely discussed in the last 36 hours. Just as important as the introduction of co-payments for medicines and GP visits are changes…
Finance minister Mathias Cormann has worked closely with Joe Hockey on the federal budget.
AAP/Alan Porritt
Our budget coverage continues with interviews firstly with Finance minister Mathias Cormann and then Shadow Finance Minister Tony Burke. Listen to both interviews in this podcast.
Queensland Premier Campbell Newman has been a strong voice against cuts to health and education in the federal budget.
AAP/Dan Peled
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has bluntly dismissed howls of outrage from Liberal premiers over the budget’s plan to push future funding responsibility for hospitals and schools on to the states. He has rejected…
You can’t fault a treasurer for trying to put the best possible spin on budget numbers — and that’s certainly what Joe Hockey did last night. The most important numbers, of course, are the deficit projections…
The new budget has served up a big hit to Australia’s environment.
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Budgets are often framed as give and take. But in the case of the environment, the government is taking large amounts of money in cuts, while giving little back beyond funding the Direct Action climate…
While funding medical research has been given a boost, other facets of science such as astronomy face deep cuts.
AAP/Paul Miller
It’s hard to ignore the irony. The 2014 federal budget will “better target innovation and research funding to areas of national and strategic priority” but funding cuts of more than A$111 million to CSIRO…
How did the media cover treasurer Joe Hockey’s first federal budget?
AAP/Lukas Coch
In the lead-up to the Abbott government’s first federal budget, there was one standout headline that stole attention from “exclusive” pre-budget leaks: WHY I’VE GOT A PACKER UP MY CLACKER In terms of tabloid…
Many long-promised renewable and low-emission energy programs have been scrapped or cut back in the Coalition’s first budget.
Lukas Coch/AAP
There are billions of dollars of broken promises in the Abbott government’s first budget for low-emission and renewable energy programs – and wiggle room to break even more in the next few years. Among…
How well does the budget “share” the pain around and by what definitions of fairness?
AAP/Lukas Coch
Joe Hockey says that this budget shares the pain. But what is the right share for whom? This budget is like all the others – it lacks a compass that tells us the overall effect of government spending and…
Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne