The October budget offers a series of welcome bread-and-butter commitments, but postponed addressing Australia’s meat and potato revenue problems until at least May 2023, according to the independent think tank Australia Institute.
“Meat and potato revenue reforms that Australia needs, such as scrapping Stage 3, a windfall tax or fixing the PRRT, have been disappointingly delayed until May 2023 at least,” said Matt Grudnoff, senior economist at the Australia Institute.
“While this budget provides a welcome influx of spending on education, childcare, health, aged care, housing and tax compliance measures, the main course of revenue reform – including including the removal of Stage 3 tax cuts for high earners and resource tax reforms – is the real work ahead,” Mr. Grudnoff said.
The growing revenue needs of NDIS, aged care, income support, housing, climate action and defense will require substantial reform in future budgets.
Real reforms:
- Cheaper preschool education costs $4.7 billion over projected estimates, bringing real economic dividend, boosting participation rates
- Extension of paid parental leave to 26 weeks and better distribution between parents. $530 million over 4 years starting in 2022-2023
Missed opportunities
- Removing the quarter of a trillion dollars in Stage 3 tax cuts for high earners. Stage 3 will cost about a third of the deficit over the next two years.
- Any decision to reform and improve tax measures on resources like gas, coal and oil, whether through a windfall tax or reforms to fix the PRRT, has been postponed until May 2023 at the latest. early.
Budget measures delivered:
- Other big election commitments include 24/7 Registered Nurses Aged Care reforms.
- 20,000 university places for in-demand skills including nursing, teaching and other professions targeted at people with low socio-economic status valued at $485.5 million
- Cheaper drug policy at $786 million
- $228 million to bolster Medicare
- $410 for electric vehicle rebate policy
- The budget will also allocate an additional $520 million to community organizations, including housing, Indigenous and domestic violence services, to help deal with rising inflation.
- Other important costs to be reflected in the budget include the cost of servicing the public debt, which is expected to increase by 14% per year, while NDIS spending will increase by 14.7% and defense spending by 5.4%. %.
- An increase in foreign aid was also included in the budget, with a $900 million increase in official development assistance (ODA) for the Pacific and a $470 million increase in aid to the Pacific. ‘South East Asia.
- Multinational corporations pay more taxes, with the decision to raise $1 billion over four years from 2023-24.
- It also projects a $3 billion improvement in bottom line by recovering additional revenue from expanding and strengthening existing tax compliance programs.
