ANOTHER two rounds of tax cuts, energy rebates, health and infrastructure spending are at the centre of this year’s Federal Budget.
• Budget deficit of $27.6 billion this financial year.
• Commonwealth gross debt to rise to $940 billion (33.7 per cent of GDP) in 2024/25 before cracking $1 trillion the year after.
• Net debt to rise to $556 billion in 2024/25.
• Economic growth to rise to 1.5 per cent in 2024/25.
• Unemployment rate to rise to 4.25 per cent in 2024/25.
• Consumer price index inflation to fall to 2.5 per cent in 2024/25.
• Wages to rise by 3 per cent in 2024/25.
• Living standards to rise, with growth in real household disposable income revised up from 1.25 per cent to 2 per cent in 2025/26.
• Net overseas migration will fall from 435,000 in 2023/24 to 225,000 in 2026/27.
Key measures… if Labor is re-elected
• Two more tax cuts for every Australian taxpayer, worth about $10 per week when fully implemented, starting from July 2026.
• Energy bill relief for households and one million small businesses extended for six months from July 1, worth $150 for each recipient at a cost of $1.8 billion.
• Cheaper prescription drugs, with most payments capped at $25 per PBS medicine, costing $689 million over four years.
• Disaster recovery funding worth $1.2 billion for southeast Queensland and northern NSW communities hit by ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred.
• Increased access to Medicare bulk billing, 50 new urgent care clinics, funds for nursing scholarships and GP trainees costing more than $9 billion over four years.
• Help to Buy shared equity housing program wage and price caps raised to increase access for first home buyers.
• Banning non-compete clauses for low and middle-income earners, which could lift the wages of affected workers by $2500 per year and lift GDP by $5 billion per year.
• Slashing university student debt by 20 per cent, amounting to $16 billion in HECS debt from the headline cash balance.
• Minimum three days of subsidised child care up to salary cap of $500,000, at a cost of $427 million over five years.
• Defence spending worth $1 billion brought forward for guided weapons, AUKUS submarine base, frigate program.
• Infrastructure upgrades, including $7.2 billion to upgrade the Bruce Highway in Queensland, $2 billion in to create a new rail hub in Melbourne’s west as part of a future airport rail link and $1 billion for a rail corridor in Sydney’s southwest.
