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发表于 2016-7-12 23:53:02
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Prior to the election, we said that we wouldn’t cut the age pension. I want
to assure vulnerable people that the age pension won’t be less tomorrow than it
is today and that people turning 65 tomorrow are certainly not going to have to
wait five years to retire.
I’m confident that pensioners will be better off because they’ll lose the
carbon tax but keep the carbon tax compensation.
Still, with four out of five seniors on the pension, the number of workers
per retiree dropping from five to three by 2050, and more than 1000 people
becoming eligible for the age pension every single week, long term reform is
essential and unavoidable.
To keep our commitments, there will be no changes to the pension during
this term of parliament but there should be changes to indexation arrangements
and eligibility thresholds in three years’ time.
There are other social security benefits where indexation arrangements and
eligibility thresholds could be adjusted now.
Adjusting indexation slows the rate of increase and helps to ensure that a
strong social safety net can be preserved for everyone’s future.
And everyone will benefit from the abolition of the carbon tax which
damages our economy without helping the environment and which is costing the
average household $550 a year.
I know that most families are doing it tough, including many families with
above average incomes but with heavy commitments.
Not for a second would I label families as “rich” just because they are
earning $100,000 a year. A teacher married to a part-time shop assistant with
children to feed, clothe and educate is certainly not rich especially paying a
capital city mortgage.
But the best way, the best way to help families on $100,000 a year is
long-term tax relief and more business and job opportunities, not social
security.
The changes in this budget will make the personal tax cuts much more likely
in four or five years’ time.
Still, come budget night, I suspect that there won’t be many without a
potential grumble – but involving everyone in repaying Labor’s spending binge is
the only way to be fair.
The budget pain will be temporary but the economic improvement will be
permanent.
I can assure you that everyone, everyone will be involved, including high
income earners such as members of parliament.
I know that the tendency on budget night is to focus on “what’s happening
to me” but we need to focus on “what’s happening to us” because everyone needs
to be involved in fixing Labor’s debt mess if all of us are to prosper in the
years ahead.
This will not be a budget for the rich or the poor; it will be a budget for
the country.
It will be a nation building budget, even though it cuts spending, because
you can’t build a nation by spending money you don’t have in ways that don’t
build up your economic strength.
Everything about this budget is calculated to boost the long term strength
of the economy; spending less on consumption so that we can spend more on
capital including human capital in the areas at which we excel.
Business programmes will involve less bureaucracy and be more about backing
businesses’ own judgment.
Training programmes will focus less on trainer priorities and more on
employer needs.
Universities’ funding will shift but they will have much more freedom to
innovate and to build on Australia’s strength as a magnet for students, teachers
and researchers from around the world.
School leavers will be earning or learning – not becoming accustomed to
unemployment.
Starting in this budget, for older people, for people with disabilities and
women with young children, our aim is to maximise everyone’s ability to
participate in the economy; it’s about driving change, but even more it’s about
empowering choice.
And, of course, in a modern economy, that means more freedom to move around
our cities rather than spending hours in some of the world’s longest parking
lots.
This budget will fund our biggest ever national roads programme and make it
easier for the states to fund the metro roads and rail that commuters need.
Now, I said earlier that budgets reveal the character of governments; they
also show the mettle of countries.
This budget is about shifting our focus from entitlement to enterprise;
from welfare to work; from hand-out to hand-up; from our own short-term
anxieties to our nation’s long-term opportunities.
Government’s job is to make it easier for people to make big decisions: to
build a house, to begin to study, to start a business, to employ someone or to
save for the future – and to make it more likely that people will decide to have
a go – because we can’t be a generous society unless we are also a productive
one.
For the government, of course there are political risks in this budget.
But we owe it to our country; we owe it everyone who elected us to clean up
the mess and to take decisions rather than to defer them.
Without a clear economic plan, our standard of living will decline; with
this budget plan Australia can continue to be a beacon of prosperity, freedom
and hope for the wider world.
Serious people and serious countries must be able to have an adult
conversation about the choice that we face.
That’s what The Sydney Institute has invariably tried to promote and our
country is the better for it.
For too long, governments talked about being economically responsible but
squibbed the big challenges.
I don’t expect the government to be more popular the day after the budget
but I do hope that we might have earned people’s respect for saying what we mean
and doing what we say.
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