Last night, the Australian Federal Government handed down the Federal Budget and most people are annoyed that it will hit middle class to lower class Australians hard. There is going to be a co-payment of $7 each time you go to a doctor or emergency department, the Family Tax benefit B will not exist anymore for parents with children over 6, unemployment benefits will not be available for under 25s, and university fees will be deregulated. And that's just a small part of the damning budget.
But I will go back to what I wrote about a few weeks back about single mothers being dependent on their ex-spouses to provide child support. DON'T DEPEND ON ANYONE!!! Treat government hand-outs as a bonus not a necessity, treat child support as a help not something you need. NO ONE can help you, unless you help yourself.
I can understand why the government has introduced $7 co-payment fees for seeing a doctor - the number of people waiting for bulk-billing doctors to get a free service is an absolute joke. Most see them because they are lonely and over the years, the local church minister (a free service) has been replaced by the doctor because of bulk-billing. And that's a phenomenon that happens around the world. It also stops dependent drug users doing the rounds getting prescriptions from different doctors, because they won't be able to find the money to keep seeing them so regularly.
As for no unemployment benefits for under 25 year olds… there is a lot of sense to that. With many children staying at home longer, it makes parents more accountable. With the rapidly growing IT/internet world out there, it makes young, tech savvy children possible to be entrepreneurs in the IT world and create their own businesses… even if it's not IT based where they make computer games, software, etc, it could be eBay trading, or accounts based, writing based, stock-market based, … just something where they could sit at home and feed off the information from the net to make a dollar.
If the government doesn't set standards now, or, if you like, reduce the ease of getting hand-outs now, then we will have a growingly dependent society, and everyone will be on some type of government hand-out. Our country can't afford to be having a generation dependent on government money and in turn, no one paying any tax.
I will admit, that I do receive money from the government, but I don't need it. I only get it because I've registered my children in the system and they just gave it to me. As for child support, I have registered for it, ONLY because I believe both my ex-husband and I brought our kids into this world and he needs to take some responsibility for that. However, I am not dependent on it (in fact he hasn't paid a dime since December).
The only thing I do disagree on regarding the budget is making it less affordable for university/college students. If we don't educate our society, then we will not have the people to run the $20 billion medical research centre, or advance or sciences, economics, arts or trades. We need to take a leaf out of the Scandinavian countries who make it almost free to go to university for all types of vocations, but then pay higher taxes for the privilege of it, ensuring there is almost no welfare system as everyone has the skills, qualifications and personal know-how to get a job or have a career.
Education is the key to ensuring every person in society can be independent. If that is our foundation, then we will all have a healthy economic country, a fabulous lifestyle and generations to come of eager kids who want to make a go of themselves (and maybe even stop being dependent on their parents before they are 25!).
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