Federal Budget - who wins, who loses
Over the weekend thousands of Australians took to the streets to protest the Abbott Government Budget cuts.
While the Treasurer Joe Hockey claimed everyone should share the burden, new research shows that the heavy lifting is falling disproportionately on some in the community than others.
Peter Whiteford, Professor, ANU has examined how changes in Government payments will affect certain individuals and families, information that's usually contained in the Budget papers but is missing in this year's documents.
His analysis found, by 2016, an unemployed 23 year-old will lose $47 a week or 18 per cent of their disposable income. An unemployed single parent with one eight year-old child will lose $54 a week or 12 per cent. Compare that with a high-income earner, earning $250,000. They'll pay an extra $24 a week or less than one per cent of their disposable income through the deficit levy.
His analysis is conservative without the Government's abolition of the schoolkids bonus and the impact of the Medicare co-payments or the pharmaceutical charges or the fuel excise tax.
There are very clear values and preferences in this budget with the poor disproportionately bearing the burden.
The union movement has condemned the Budget describing it as the biggest attack on the social wage Australia had seen.
