The Ups And Downs To Look Forward To
The Age
Monday August 16, 1993
HEALTH The Medicare benefit for eye testing is likely to be scrapped in today's federal Budget.
The move, which will save $90million a year, will affect people visiting optometrists and opthalmologists for services related to glasses and contact lenses.
It is believed more than two million people a year claim benefits for eye testing. With the removal of the benefit, people undergoing eye tests will have to pay about $50 a consultation. The benefit is likely to end from 1November.
The Budget is also expected to raise the threshold beyond which non- pensioners can qualify for discounted drugs from $312.30 to about $400 a year.
The Government may detail its program to reduce overservicing by doctors. It had aimed to recover $410million _ likely to be revised downward in the Budget _ from this area over four years to fund free dental care for pensioners and to reduce waiting lists.
The commitment to free dental care is likely to be honored.
The Government is set to announce details of how it will spend the $100million it promised in the election campaign for the purchase of private hospital beds to cut waiting lists. _ BILL BIRNBAUER EDUCATION Sweeping changes to the Higher Education Contribution Scheme _ including a rate increase, a lower repayment threshold and the introduction of an undergraduate entitlement _ are expected.
Changes to the secondary student component of Austudy are also expected along with measures aimed at boosting Australia's intake of foreign students. Overseas students contribute an estimated $1.1billion a year to the economy.
If introduced, a HECS entitlement would apply to all undergraduate courses and the number of years students had to complete a degree before they reverted to full fee-paying status.
The president of the National Union of Students, Mr Ken Fowlie, said students were likely to be given one year above the length of their course before HECS cut out.
The Government is also expected to drop the HECS repayment threshold from $27,700 to about $25,000 and to increase the rate of HECS from 23 per cent to 30 per cent. _ JOANNE PAINTER DEFENCE and FOREIGN AID Arms and overseas development programs are certain to be hit.
The foreign aid allocation, which stood at $1.38billion last year, is expected to maintain parity in real terms, but will drop as a percentage of gross national product, sources say.
Aid agencies have been campaigning strongly in recent weeks for the Government to maintain its election promise to lift Australia's overseas aid contribution to 0.4 per cent of GNP by 1995.
But the signals from government indicate strongly that the election promise will be broken.
Sources indicated yesterday that the Budget aid allocation would be about $1.4billion.
The bad news for overseas aid comes as a report by an international consortium of aid agencies claims that the world's richest nations, including Australia, are turning their backs of the world's most poor.
The Defence Department, the nation's third largest consumer of public funds after the departments of social security and education, is facing cuts, although it is believed they will not be as great as initially planned.
The armed services have been trimmed in recent years to cut costs, and critics say there is little room for futher cost-cutting. _ MARTIN DALY LOCAL GOVERNMENT Forcing councils to pay sales tax would sabotage joint federal and local government initiatives to cut the number of long-term unemployed, the Australian Local Government Association warned yesterday.
The change, expected in today's Budget, would either increase council rates by 10 per cent or ``cut out a huge range of services", the association's president, Councillor Peter Woods, said.
Councillor Woods said that if councils had to pay the sales tax _ a national cost to councils of up to $500million _ it would be devastating. It would retard federal-local government job creation schemes, expected to be outlined in the Budget. _ THOMAS TAYLOR
A SPECULATOR'S GUIDE
$2billion cut from spending
$1billion in extra revenue from taxes and levies
Higher taxes on cigarettes and alcohol
HECS fees raised
Rules on Australians receiving pensions while living overseas to
be tightened
The income limit for family allowance payments to fall by about
$5000 from $65,000 for a family with one child
Executive perks to be hit by extending the fringe benefits tax
An extra $100million to be raised by tightening the wholesale
sales tax regime, and/or by raising wholesale sales tax rates from 10
per cent to 15 or 20 per cent
Sales tax on non-luxury cars to rise from 15 to 20 per cent
A tax rise of between two cents and five cents on leaded fuel
Extra revenue duty of two to four per cent on imports
An increased departure tax and/or a $2 customs and immigration
processing fee
Sales tax extended to include structural building components
Sales tax on all household items currently taxed at 10 per cent
to rise to 15 per cent
© 1993 The Age
