"Announcing means testing on benefits, Mr Swan described giving tax dollars to wealthy families as “simply not defensible”. From July 1 the baby bonus will increase to $5000, but will be means tested. Families where the main income earner makes more than $150,000 a year will no longer get a baby bonus.
Mums going back to work part-time will pay less in tax thanks to an increase in the low-income tax offset. From July 1, a part-time worker will be able to earn up to $14,000 without paying tax – up from $11,000 currently. By 2010/2011 the Government says a typical second income earner will be able to work 14 hours a week without paying tax.
The child care tax rebate will increase from 30 per cent to 50 per cent of out-of-pocket costs. The rebates will be paid quarterly, not annually so parents have the access to the money closer to when the bills roll in. The maximum amount payable will rise from $4354 per child to $7500 per child."
All sounds good to me! Especially the increase in the low-income tax offset, since when I (hopefully) go back to work sometime next year, I will probably come in at around that level at first.
The baby bonus thing has been much discussed on parenting/pregnancy forums I'm on. TBH, I think is a pretty reasonable level to cut it off at. Garry earns about $100K and we could definitely live without it, but it's still appreciated! (We are lucky in that we bought our house at the start of the boom, so even with the bust now, our mortgage is significantly less than the value of our house. We also practice a parenting style that isn't as expensive as some - no $1500 prams and $50/week on formula and disposable nappies here.) I think IN GENERAL, that if the primary income earner earns more than $150K, you should be able to live without the $5K - if people don't think they can, perhaps they ought to rethink some of their lifestyle choices. I'm sure there are exceptions, but yeh. Go ahead and disagree if you like :)
Fellow Aussies, what do you think?
I will be interested to read about the housing affordability measures, but maybe after the kids go to bed!
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mummygeorgie- Georgie
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Australia's population is not sustainable, with the way that we use our resources. Unless we drastically change our consumption practices, we need to work to make our population shrink, not grow.
Although it's the trend for high income earners to have fewer children (you guys seem to be the exception :-P), people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds have more children, thus increasing the proportion of people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Rather than giving someone money for popping out a kid, more money should be put into education. A good quality, free education is something that every child in Australia deserves to have. There is a pretty damn strong correlation between standard of education and socioeconomic status.
Essentially, I think the cost of raising a child should be reduced.
(I'm somewhat against the concept of the baby bonus)
Housing affordability is another thing that shits me.
Giving people more tax breaks on buying houses will just make house prices increase even more. What we should be doing is cutting down on negative gearing so the people with two or more properties don't rely on the government to pay their mortgages.
Getting rid of negative gearing will really fuck up the rental market, but the sudden rush of investment properties being dumped for shares will result in a net decrease of housing prices.
n.b. I only did one economics unit at uni.
I'm fine, because I can afford private health cover, but millions of people aren't.
If you work, your income is pretty much set at a certain amount. If you have a child, you can expect a lot of congratulatory emails but no extra money in your pay. If you have a second child, your boss doesn't come up to you, congratulate you on your fantastic sperm and offer you more money.
But if you are on benefits, every time you have another child, they raise your income. Whaaa? Plus you have cheaper transport, cheaper electricity and phone, cheap prescriptions, bulk-billed doctor visits, and just a general safety-net by being on benefits, emergency payments, advance payments, etc etc.
On another note, you added me and I would like to know who you are ;)
The reason why my name isn't on my LJ is because, due to work, people can get my full name and photo. I have some privacy concerns.
If you must know who it is - it's Matthias :-P
(You know only one Matthias, right?)
I have privacy issues too hence not adding random people.
And I am certainly LOVING the idea of the 50% child care tax rebate. Although if it cuts out when the combined household income reaches $150K, that would stop me from returning to work full time (not that I want to!) until the boys are both in high school.
The only thing is, i was under the impression that the baby bonus actually replaced something on your yearly income tax where you got a rebate or a deduction or something based on how much your household income had dropped after having a baby, but because you didnt get that money until maybe 11mths after the baby was born, they replaced it with the baby bonus.
Actually, a lot of proposals for changes to the baby bonus system annoy me. Having a baby means having to move out of house-shares and parental homes. I used my baby bonus (with other money i had saved up for my planned trip to India) to pay 6mths rent in advance, which was the ONLY way I could get a rental! That was $9,000 and then I had to buy furniture, a fridge, a washing machine, etc. If i got vouchers or monthly installments or something like that, there's no way I could have done that. And you can't use it to buy baby stuff coz you dont get it til at least a couple of weeks after baby is born, if you used your savings or borrowed money off family to buy the stuff, you need to replace that with CASH, not vouchers!
Grr, and it annoys me as well, when TodayTonight and ppl who write in to newspapers complain about ppl buying plasma/lcd tvs with their baby bonus. If you move house when u have ur baby and need to buy a small tv (so u can watch infomercials while ur breastfeeding at 3am) you can't buy anything but plasma/lcd. Trust me, i tried! I jsut wanted a big boxy ugly cheap tv. They dont exist anymore!
So yeh, ppl who bitch about the baby bonus system suck- but that little blurb about the budget sounds pretty good.
When I take into account our mortgage repayments, AUD $5,000 doesn't even cover 2 months of repayments!
I like the benefits they are bringing to working mums and the rebate for childcare however I am not happy with the fact that they only give a baby "bonus" and not regularly paid maternity leave.
Sure that is our own problem, but I'd like (and prefer) if they would have paid maternity leave for at least 3 to 4 months. Even if it were to be paid as insurance every month.
It would just be so nice to be able to have a child and to not have to panic thinking about going back to work right away and to have a little time to bond with a child.
is 100k in aussie bucks about the same as here? like will it get you the same style of life?
I agree with the baby bonus thing because I think it was a stupid idea from the start but nice to have ;p
I had to turn off Brendan Nelsons' reply because it was so idiotic ;p