2003/04 Budget (1 Viewer)

[yeahyeahyeahs]

what are your views on it? im pretty sad so i watched the 7:30pm ABC budget special but can't decide whether its good or bad... need to pick up the papers 2moz for a better idea.

Some of the things mentioned were a surplus of just under $4 billion, surprise income tax cuts (which are quite small), the Medicare debacle, university fees rising up by 30%, defence spending over the next few years, and the bracket creep thingie (i dont understand it). plus costello reinforced Australia's resilience to internal and external shocks and our strong growth. what do you think?

 

[ellipsis]

Deja Vu.

There's another thread exactly like this.

But oh well. I reckon the fees going up will suck, but yeah I'm waiting for the papers/my eco teacher to analyse it. It would be good to see more info, not all the stuff the politicans warp to make it seem positive.

 

[yeahyeahyeahs]

bummer just saw the other post...put so much effort into mine as well

 

[bobo123]

ok i deleted mine

i posted it first though

sorry ellipsis, your post in mine was lost so if you could repost it here that would be cool

yeah as i said

the increase to 50% fee paying students is gona suck

 

[yeahyeahyeahs]

thanks bobo123 your such a doll

secretly im quite happy with the 50% fullfee paying students cuz i reckon im gonna end up one of em (no way im gettin into law due to my academic excellence!). but the 30% HECS increase would suck very much when you reach the workplace. Costello keeps justifying it saying that you now need to earn $30 000 not $24000 before you pay anything back but in the end you still pay it all back.

 

[ellipsis]

Mmmm I can't remember much.

Except why, oh why the 30% increase now. *Sigh* they could have waited a few years.

The tax cuts were pretty lousy too. An extra $500 a year in the scheme of things probably won't effect many people greatly. If they pooled it all together they could use it for something much better - like university funding

 

[sukiyaki]

i watched the nightline one, i dunno what teh heck they saying all i know is that its sucks mainly due to the university fees

 

[Ollz San]

Budget 2003/04

Major Initiatives:
1. Personal tax cuts (not only for political motive, but also economical)
2. Medicare (from universal healthcare to user-pay)
3. Tertiary education (uni fees)
4. Defence (upgrade, counter terrorism, internal security)
5. Business tax reform (facilitate globalisation)

Fiscal Strategies:
1. Keynesian - Leakages, injections, etc - tax cuts
2. Non Keynesian - National Savings Strategy - underlying cash surplus of 2.2 Billions/fiscal surplus of 700 millions
3. Monetarist - crowding out theory - 2.2 B surplus
G>T - Govt Borrowing rise - i rates goes up - C + I falls

Negative aspects of the budget:
1. Overdependent on income tax

• Too reliant on one source of revenue
• High Marginal Rate of Tax acts as a disincentive
• Dissuades foreign investment
• Incentive to avoide/evade tax (like Packer man)

2. Inflationary - health & education costs / prices to rise
3. tax cuts minimise public debt repayment
4. Disingenuous - eg. GST not counted in revenue ie. rev is 21% GDP compared to "GST included" rev of 25.5% GDP.
ie. Costello seen as lowest taxing treasurer whereas if he included GST he'd be the highest taxing treasurer.

 

[Ollz San]

just a note from school...

did anyone else discuss it at school? want to share yours?

 

[sukiyaki]

OO fanks for that info ollz
i see if i could post sum discussion notes 2molo

 

[Tia]

N e one willing to scan notes they get on the Budget?
My class didn't get much at all.... (except a light test which didn't do much to help!)

 

[yeahyeahyeahs]

best thing to do is read the newspaper...saturdays paper should be good.

 

[Ollz San]

umm....don't know if you guys have read the article but here is the link

SMH article

It's an article by Ross Gittins.

If the link doesn't work, I saved the article so you can just PM me.

 

[Tia]

The thing is, i've got several newspapers and have been asked to summarise everythin'.
The test was useless and i've spent hours summarising, my friend at another school had her teacher summarise the most important parts for HSC and explained to them important concepts.

What's important for the HSC and in what kind of questions could they asked directly and indirectly about the budget?

 

[big_will08]

hmm my teacher writes articles for "The Australian" and he let our class write one about the budget (student perspective)

i dont have a copy but it was like page 5/6 on the day AFTER the budget!

We were seperated in groups to look indepth into certain areas then all info was collected together to form the article. I dont remember what is in the article other than it was good! coz some crappy radio station picked it up and noticed it!
hehe

 

[Bambul]

It doesn't look like the tertiary education reforms (and it's a lot more than increasing HECS by 30%, in fact that could be seen as misleading - more of a newspaper headline than the facts) and changes to Medicare will get through the Senate anyway.

As far as the tax cuts go, they are for returning bracket creep, which is what happens as inflation pushes wage earners through the tax brackets, increasing the income tax they pay as a proportion of their salary.

There are political reasons, but there is actually some economics theory to back them up (it gives up about 3 years worth of bracket creep).

 

[yeahyeahyeahs]

Originally posted by Bambul
It doesn't look like the tertiary education reforms (and it's a lot more than increasing HECS by 30%, in fact that could be seen as misleading - more of a newspaper headline than the facts) and changes to Medicare will get through the Senate anyway.

If the Senate doesnt pass the appropriation bill for those reforms they may face a double dissolution which they are quite scared off so maybe they will pass it eventually although i doubt they would without further amendments to the bills.

 

[Ollz San]

Originally posted by Tia
The thing is, i've got several newspapers and have been asked to summarise everythin'.
The test was useless and i've spent hours summarising, my friend at another school had her teacher summarise the most important parts for HSC and explained to them important concepts.

What's important for the HSC and in what kind of questions could they asked directly and indirectly about the budget?

something to do with Fiscal Policy perhaps?
apparently last year they had a question worth 20 marks on Fiscal policy (or so my teacher said).

 

[truly-in-bliss]

we got forced into entering that budget essay comp run by the newspaper *THe Australian*...

i have got abt a whole box full of papers abt da budget....wkli ones from smh...the australian...financial review blah blah blah....

if anione wants info on the budget..there is a good section on the The Australian website. www.theaustralian.com.au .....there is an icon at the right side that says *2003 budget*....that link provides you with a fiar bit of articles on da budget....

if anione got ani quest on da budget just ask....after reading a wk worth of 4 differnt newspaps, i think i have some knowledge of it...now lemme dig it up....*sighs*..... da hsc ..wot da heck....lol

 

[shaynO]

leading edge analysis of budget 03/04

http://www.leadingedgeeconomics.com.au/PDFs/may03update.pdf