Federal Budget breakdown
As the ABC’s Henry Belot put it, “This is Scott Morrison's third budget and put simply, it's a pre-election document designed to make sure he gets another one.”
The Budget deficit this year will be $14.5 billion, before swinging to a $2.2 billion surplus in 19-20.
The big ticket item this year is a tax cut for anyone earning under $90,000 a year. The government estimates that 4.4 million taxpayers earning between $48,000 and $90,000 will benefit from an extra $530 tax break.
Aged care is a big focus of this budget, with the Government wanting more older Australians to get care at home. About 14,000 more people will get home care packages at a cost of $1.6 billion over four years. But that’s a long way off the over 100,000 elderly already on the waiting list for at-home funding.
For WA, it means a $3.2b GST top-up being spent on roads and hospitals.
$1 billion of that will be for Metronet and a further $944 million will go towards tackling road congestion, including Tonkin Highway and the Bunbury Outer Ring Road.
The GST top-up also includes $189 million to be spent on Joondalup and Osborne Park hospital expansions and the Royal Perth Hospital refurbishment.
The major misses for WA include; no funding for remote housing, specifically for aboriginal communities (Yet, the NT got over $500m) and no extra funding for new training for NDIS providers.
Find out more about how the Federal Budget will affect you: