By Demi Ball
The recent announcement of the Federal Budget by the Australian government has caused an upstir of mixed reactions.
Eighteen-year-old student Niamh Craw, who is from Avalon, believes that the budget offers both positive and negative parts.
“The budget is a fairly decent one considering it’s supposed to reduce Australia’s debt over the next 10 years, improve national security and assist businesses,” she said.
However, she found it, “a little confusing” in that tax cuts would also be implemented this year.
“(They) are wonderful and beneficial, but we’re going to have to be very considerate of how we spend our money and resources.
“The main thing that got me happy about the budget was the $500 million investment into Genomics which is an area I would like to enter in the future, and the importance of the research to come out of that. Also, I don’t need to get life insurance to get superannuation.”
Peter White, a staff member from UNSW, believes the tax reductions are unnecessary and that the money could be better spent elsewhere.
“My belief is we should be putting money into services; to me it’ll be a small scale tax cut from what I hear,” he said.
“For me, I’m middle income I guess; a few extra dollars a week is just sort of dispersing the money. I’d say let’s put it together and spend it on education and health, they’re crucial. So I‘m actually not happy about the tax cuts.”
He is, however, supportive of other aspects of the budget.
“We’re absolutely, desperately short of infrastructure funding, so I believe if it is going to go into roads and transport, yeah I’d support that.”
Friends Justin Mckee and David Wassef, both 20, are not fully aware of what the budget entails, however they believe the tax cuts are a positive.
While Justin said he, “personally (hadn’t) seen it”, David agreed with the government’s decision to provide tax cuts to low income earners.
“The only thing I saw with it was tax cuts for everybody earning money under like $200k and that’s a good thing,” he said.
