Tonight's budget delivers critical support to single parents, people on low incomes needing health care, and kicks off important investment to retrofit low-income homes to improve their energy efficiency. ACOSS also welcomes the increase in wages for people working in aged care, most of whom are low-paid women, and the establishment of a Net Zero Authority to oversee impacted worker and community transition to a clean economy.
Dr Cassandra Goldie, ACOSS CEO said:
"We welcome restoring Parenting Payment Single for 57,000 single parents whose youngest child is 13 or younger. The investment in Medicare to boost bulk-billed GP consultations as well as doubling medication available under one script will greatly help people on low incomes with chronic illness. The $300m investment to retrofit 60,000 social housing dwellings is a good first step to improving energy efficiency for low-income homes.
"However, the real increases to base rates of JobSeeker, Youth Allowance and Rent Assistance will still leave more than one million people in poverty, unable to afford three meals a day and a roof over their head. Whilst every dollar counts, the $20 a week increase to JobSeeker and related payments is well below the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee's finding that it needs to rise by at least $128 a week to ensure people can cover the basics.
"The government is providing an increase of $2.85 a day for people with the least. The Stage 3 tax cuts will deliver $25 a day to people on the highest incomes. We have our priorities wrong.
"People aged 55 years and over and unemployed 9 months or more will now receive $56.70 a day, well below ACOSS's ask of at least $76 a day.
"Tonight, JobSeeker is still one of the lowest unemployment payments in the OECD, despite Australia being one of the wealthiest countries in the world. With unemployment forecast to rise to 4.5% by 2024-2025 - meaning a further 150,000 people will be without paid work – the government must right this long-standing wrong.
"We will work every day to ensure income support payments are lifted so that they cover the essentials – $52.85 a day is not enough for people on Jobseeker. $42.85 is not enough for people on Youth Allowance. We congratulate everyone who campaigned strongly for a substantial increase to JobSeeker, Youth Allowance and related payments in this budget. While tonight's increase is well below what is required, we believe without your advocacy, there may have been no increase at all.
"The Budget has delivered a 15% increase to Rent Assistance, the first real increase in more than 30 years. This is welcome but will fail to prevent widespread housing stress, particularly for people on JobSeeker and Youth Allowance. ACOSS's budget ask was for this payment to be doubled to reflect the cost of rents paid by people on low incomes, alongside lifting JobSeeker and related payments to at least $76 a day.
"There is $4 billion in the budget to support organisations, including community sector organisations to fund wage increases, higher service delivery costs and increased demand. We look forward to working with government to ensure the community sector is sufficiently covered and funded to provide essential services.
"We support the government's price cap on wholesale gas contracts and the energy bill payments of up to $500 will provide some welcome immediate relief on energy bills. However, we are keen to see further detail as to who receives this support. We are concerned that some people on the lowest incomes may miss out because they are not covered by their state or territory concession scheme (for example, people on JobSeeker in the Northern Territory).
"On the revenue front, there are some welcome measures like reducing tax concessions for high-income earners in superannuation and tightening of tax compliance. However, the government's Petroleum Resource Rent Tax changes will only recover a fraction of what could be raised, and there's no action on introducing a 10% royalty, which would raise an additional $8 billion a year.
"This budget takes some important steps forward on many fronts, but a bolder vision is needed to adequately fund health, aged care, income support and other essential services, as well as invest in an adequate safety net and reforms to fairly and inclusively accelerate action on climate change."
