Get your red-hot budget tips here!

[Jovial Monk]

Come on, wake up! Budget next Tue night and no one is speculating about what is in it?

Super salary sacrifice will be reduced--since the kite cleverly flown wasn't shot down it may be eliminated.

Top tax scale will be increased and the starting point may be lowered. I hope they are, anyway--these were the people benefiting from Howard's endless tax cuts and they can damn well do their bit now!

Lowest tax scale will be cut and the starting point raised.

The health care rebate--very very flawed policy, upper class welfare--will go. Want to be 'Rolfed' pay for it yourself and all the other useless fringe treatements.

The FHOG will stay but only for new dwellings, or just be reduced.

Alcopops Bill will be reintroduced and I hope it passes! Reason we pay such high excise on fags and booze is that a few decades later the addicts of both require lots of expensive public hospital care, LOTS of medicines etc etc.

Some stimulus. . .that could be just the deficit from much lower tax receipts. Pity Howard ate the fat kine, we now have seven years of lean kine.

Any other hints? Suggestions? Wishlists?

[Ethnic]

I'm curious as to what the education side of the budget will be. I also look forward to knowing once and for all what the deficit is.

[JW Frogen]

I'm curious as to what the education side of the budget will be. I also look forward to knowing once and for all what the deficit is.

The words "curious" and "public education" must never be said together least the Four Horseman of the PCalypse decend upon thee and demand they stop thinking.

[Jovial Monk]

As discussed in another thread, hopefully the money wasted on super rich, elite private schools will be bulk reduced or completely cut off.

[Ethnic]

As discussed in another thread, hopefully the money wasted on super rich, elite private schools will be bulk reduced or completely cut off.

Here's hoping. If religious denominations want their own schools, they can bloody well pay for them. It shouldn't be up to us, the taxpayer, to stuff money in their hypocritical mouths.

[skippy]

As discussed in another thread, hopefully the money wasted on super rich, elite private schools will be bulk reduced or completely cut off.

Here's hoping. If religious denominations want their own schools, they can bloody well pay for them. It shouldn't be up to us, the taxpayer, to stuff money in their hypocritical mouths.

Aint that the truth.

[Jovial Monk]

Well, that might well happen.

I am sure our Finance Minister, Lindsay Tanner is looking for all sorts of ways to cut out waste & middle class welfare and the like.

health care rebate--did not lessen one iota the workload on public hospitals but DID reduce the C/w funds going to public hospitals, just like it seems the obscene susbsidies of elite private schools is reducing funding to public schools

That super subsidy, salary sacrifice up to $50K to super and only pay tax on it at the 15% rate! In fact there are lots of ways to make the rich pay a fairer share of tax even without changing the tax scales.

A hard one to sell, but those who don't need the pension due to other income or assets, and who likely benefitted from all sorts of tax rorts like the super, need to be taken off the pension. The pension is for those who have no other support and if the number of people on the aged pension is reduced it makes it much easier to increase the aged pension. This was the sort of crap Howard did, treating the boom revenue as a permanent new level of revenue and handing lots of it to elderly rich retirees, the Fib's biggest support base. This shit has to be removed to get the budget back to a position of long term health.

Some, like Sheepy are screaming about changes that might be made. Well we no longer have billions of boom revenue anymore so tough!

[Jovial Monk]

Woooooo Big Infrastructure projects

TUESDAY'S federal budget will invest more than $25 billion in key road, rail and port projects, including a heavy rail freight corridor linking Melbourne and Brisbane, aimed at hauling the nation out of recession.

The biggest overhaul of national infrastructure since the end of World War II - shifting the Rudd Government's fiscal strategy from short-term stimulus to boosting long-term productivity - will be funded by a variety of sources.

The unprecedented nation-building investment program will empty the existing $8.4 billion Building Australia Fund and tap new sources of cash, including borrowings, state government contributions and partnership with the Australian Rail Track Corporation.

The 2009 budget is expected to encourage private involvement in delivering new infrastructure and also offer incentives to superannuation funds to invest.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/st ... 01,00.html

Plus the NBN spending.

And all the savings Tanner is working on will ensure whatever borrowings/deficits are needed will be paid back quick smart once the world economy recovers, as it will.

[JW Frogen]

The health care rebate--very very flawed policy, upper class welfare--will go. Want to be 'Rolfed' pay for it yourself and all the other useless fringe treatements.

Although I am hardly an expert on this subject there was a very interesting one on the ABC radio Friday claiming this will backfire. He states it will overburden the public system, sending more people to it and make private insurance more expensive for even those lower income earners who prefer to have it as the increased cost with the removal of government subsidy will be passed on to all insurance holders, as is the very nature of insurance, spreading risk.

[Rainbow Moonlight]

In one of those leaks that we see so frequently I saw a suggestion that family tax benefits wil be means tested. I imagine that would save a lot of money but if I am means tested out of family tax benefits (which i don't really think could happen) then we could not survive.