Winners
Immigration and Defence
Immigration and Defence Departments are among the winners in Treasurer Joe Hockey’s first budget, getting hundreds of millions of dollars of funding over coming years.
The government will commit $711 million over six years to border management, which will help fund the establishment of the Australian Border Force and a college to train new staff.
Defence will also gain $59.7 million to continue its work in border control, as well as $136.1 million for overseas operations.
Businesses
About 800,000 businesses will receive a cut to company tax of 1.5 percentage points.
Expecting mums
Expecting mothers are set to benefit from Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s Paid Parent Leave Scheme, set at an income cap of $100,000 per year.
Universities
Higher education providers will be able to set their own tuition fees for the course they offer from January 2016, a move welcomed by Australian National University Vice-Chancellor Ian Young.
Existing arrangements will remain in place until the end of 2020 for students already paying fees.
Medical research
A $20 billion Medical Research Future Fund, described by Mr Hockey as the “biggest medical research endowment fund” in the world within six years, will be established.
Mr Hockey said the research centre will be funded using money from savings in the health portfolio and is expected to be established by January 2015.
Police in remote communities
More than $50 million will be spent on improving policing in remote Aboriginal communities in Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
Losers
Indigenous people
More than $500 million will be cut by merging more than 150 Indigenous programs and services into just five, to be controlled by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.
Budget figures also show the government hopes to save $15 million over three years by cutting off funding to the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples.
Students
Students are facing higher tuition fees and greater challenges in paying pack student loans under changes outlined in the budget.
From January 2016, higher education providers will be able to set their own tuition fees for the course they offer and graduates earning more than $50,638 will have to start repaying student debt from July that year.
Students will fork out more when the government changes the rate at which they pay back their student loans, changing from being linked to the inflation rate to one which reflects the cost of government borrowings.
States
Australia’s states and territories are among the losers in the budget, which cuts funding growth for public hospitals and education. Some Commonwealth payments have also been reduced, leaving state leaders saying what they’re describing as billions of dollars in funding gaps.
Public broadcasters
Funding to both the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and the Special Broadcasting Service Corporation (SBS) will be cut under the Abbott Government, which has proposed a one per cent reduction in the base funding.
The measure translates into a loss of $8 million in funding over four years for SBS and $35.5 million for ABC.
The Australia Network will also be axed, one year into the ABC’s 10 year contract.
Public servants
An estimated 16,500 public service jobs will be cut, with 3000 jobs expected to be cut from the Australian Taxation Office. Dozens of government agencies will be abolished or merged amid moves to cut the size of the public service.
Unemployed
Changes to the welfare system will see unemployed people under 30 being forced to "earn or learn".
Unemployed people under 25 will get Youth Allowance instead of Newstart, while all recipients of both payments aged under 30 will have to wait six months before receiving payments.
The changes, which come into effect on January 1, also mean young people must demonstrate that they have spent six months trying to find work before payments will be approved.
Once approved, they will have to participate in the Work for the Dole scheme at a minimum rate of 25 hours a week.
Pensioners and parents
Australia’s older citizens will be working longer into the future as the Abbott Government moves to increase the Age Pension qualifying age, rising by six months every two years from July 2025.
The government also outlined intentions to index pensions and equivalent payments by the Consumer Price Index.
Parents will also be affected as eligibility for the Family Tax Benefit Part B will be tightened, reducing the primary earner income limit from $150,000 to $100,000 per year from July next year. Payments will also be limited to families whose youngest child is younger than six years old, in an attempt to increase workforce participation among parents.
The government has also frozen the rate of Family Tax Benefit for two years from July, while the Family Tax Benefit Part A per child add-on is to be axed from July 2015.
The sick
A $7 co-contribution fee for Medicare will be introduced, and an indexation freeze will apply for the Medicare safety net threshold.
Patients with concession cards and children under 16 will have their contributions capped at 10 visits.
High income earners
The Abbott Government will introduce a temporary deficit levy this year, targeting high wage earners until June 2017.
From July, the Temporary Budget Repair Levy will effectively increase the top marginal tax rate by two percentage points for people earning more than $180,000 a year.
People with a taxable income of $200,000 will pay $400, while people earning $300,000 will pay $2400.
Politicians
Politicians and senior public servants are facing a one year freeze on their salaries, while the gold travel pass for retired members of parliament will be wound back and then abolished.
