The Budget 2004 Overview

Working for families

Total cost: $1.1 billion a year from 2007

Objectives: to ensure work pays, to ensure families have sufficient income to give their children a good start in life, to reduce the barriers to work, to simplify the benefit structure, to ensure people receive their full entitlement.

Components: Increases to Family Support, Childcare Assistance, the Accommodation Supplement, introduction of a new In Work payment for working parents, more generous work provisions for recipients of the Invalids Benefit.

Numbers affected: the new Family Assistance regime will touch 61 per cent of all families with dependent children, netting them on average an additional $66 a week. Families in the lower - $25,000 to $45,000 - income range will net an extra $95 to $100 a week.

Implementation: begins on 1 October, 2004 and runs through to 1 April, 2007.
Package to be future-proofed: Family Support, Childcare Assistance, the In Work Payment and the Parental Tax Credit will be subject to periodic review after 2007 to ensure they maintain their value over time.

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>