Wayne Swan as Treasurer will deliver the Budget on Tuesday night. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen Source: The Australian
THE Budget will spend $300 million helping welfare recipients get jobs as it shifts further into a deficit that Treasurer Wayne Swan admits will worry voters.
The biggest allocation, $258 million, will allow about 800,000 welfare recipients to earn an extra $38 a fortnight before their benefits are wound back.
There also will be extra funds for study and training and extended access to a Pensioner Concession Card.
"The Gillard Government believes that the best ticket off welfare is a job, and our reforms will go to the heart of that by removing disincentives for people to work or study while they are on income support payments," said Employment Minister Bill Shorten.
The measures are a further indication the Budget will not include an increase in the dole as welfare groups have been demanding.
Treasurer Wayne Swan today is preparing to deliver a Budget splashed with red ink he knows will worry voters but which he says will reinforce the national economy.
Asked if the public worry about a Budget with a deficit of around $20 billion Mr Swan told news.com.au: "I think they do a bit.
"But if they thought about it like they think about their housing loan they wouldn't worry about it as much."
The Treasurer wants a return to surplus "at a measured pace" which indicates more shortfalls to come.
"The thing is our debt is very small," he told news.com.au.
"The fact is that for a time running deficits is a very good buffer while you strengthen your economy and ride out the temporary ructions that come along."
A measured return to a balanced Budget was also supported by a senior business spokesman, Innes Willox of the Australian Industry Group, who yesterday said a $20 billion deficit would not concern him.
"What the business community is after now is not some masochistic austerity package because that will not allow us to create jobs or growth, but rather a credible, confident pathway forward through to surplus," Mr Willox told ABC's Insiders program.
And independent MP Rob Oakeshott said he also would accept a deficit "if we have a strategy in the long term to deal with the structural issues of tax reform that sets us up for the best standard of living of the future".
But the Opposition said the Budget projections could not be believed because the Government had them so wrong in the 2012-13 Budget.
"Whatever Wayne Swan says on Tuesday night do not believe him. Not based on what I say, but based on what he has said previously compared with what he's actually done," Mr Hockey told Sky News.
"They can't be trusted to keep their word."
The boosted earnings threshold will help those on Parenting Payment Partnered, Newstart Allowance, and Widow, Sickness or Partner Allowance get jobs worth $100 per fortnight, up from $62, before their income support starts to be reduced.
The Budget also will allocate $39.7 million over four years to extend the Pensioner Education Supplement (PES) to all single principal carer parents receiving Newstart.
From 1 January 2014, single principal carer parents receiving Newstart Allowance who take up approved study will be entitled to PES. The supplement is paid at a rate of $62.40 per fortnight or $31.20 per fortnight for a concessional study load.
It is expected that around 25,000 additional single parents will take up the PES over the next four years.
