Sydney - A big-spending government coupled with collapsing
tax receipts has driven up unemployment and pushed Australia's
finances deeply into debt, Treasurer Wayne Swan said Tuesday when
unveiling the annual budget.
'This budget is forged in the fire of the most challenging global
economic conditions since the Great Depression,' Swan told
parliament. 'Global recession has been unleashed on Australia with a
brutal, uncompromising force.'
But the nation's chief financial officer predicted the
resource-based economy would bounce back quickly with growth expected
to power above its long-term average within three years.
Next fiscal year the public debt will climb to 57 billion
Australian dollars (43 billion US dollars), joblessness will hit 8
per cent and the value of goods and services produced will shrink by
0.5 per cent.
Swan said 210 billion Australian dollars in lost revenue from
lower company and income tax receipts would keep the budget in
deficit until at least 2015.
'It will take time and it will take discipline,' Swan said about
his plans for eventually bringing public finances back into the
black. 'It will take hard choices - doing more with less.'
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Labor government, which took office in
December 2007, stung the well-off to help redistribute wealth to
pensioners and the less well-off.
Tax breaks for rich people paying into private pension funds were
removed, as was their subsidy for taking out private health
insurance.
Swan announced extra spending of 400 million Australian dollars to
beef up border security to stem the flow of asylum-seekers arriving
by sea.
To help bring the budget back into the black, the age that people
can receive the old age pension will rise to 67 from 65 by 2023 - the
first increase in 100 years.
'We have to put in place an essential reform to face this
demographic time-bomb,' Swan said. 'I'm sure these changes will be
very unpopular, but we need a sustainable pension and
retirement-income system.'
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