A Bite-Sized Federal Budget Breakdown If You're Feeling Bombarded

A wrap-up you can wrap your head around.

There's no doubt talks about the Federal budget have totally ambushed your feeds today.

On the not-so-bright side – it can be pretty darn confusing and kinda overwhelming.

What is the federal budget?

Let’s start with a quick refresher. The federal budget is a hefty document that details how the money will be prioritised, spent, and saved by the government throughout the year.

It’s sorrrt of like the budget you might do for yourself, ‘cept it's for the whole of Australia and it’s worth around $600 billion.

You may be wondering, where do these billions of dollars come from? Predominantly, our tax dollars.

It gets broken down into money coming in (income) and money going out (expenses).

The way its distributed is similar to how you might do a budget yourself – for example, just like you opting out of your Disney+ subscription to cover your phone bill, the government might put more money into childcare but sacrifice Medicare.

It can be hard to grasp, since a lot of money is being thrown around, and it all sounds big. A way to look at it is: billions can be enough to reshape an entire area of government, while millions are more likely to be something on a small level.

Now the basic background is out of the way, here are some key figures from this year's budget about the stuff that matters to you:

Flood relief is (rightfully so) at the forefront of significant environmental funding. Hundreds of millions have been dedicated to clean-up efforts, while around $15m has been put toward preparing for future disasters.

A billion bucks over nine years for protecting the Great Barrier Reef has been slated, $100m for an ‘Environment Restoration Fund’ and $53m over five years is there to support the recovery and conservation of koalas.

$60 million has been put aside to fund advanced recycling tech for soft plastics, like bread bags and chip packets.

Meanwhile, if you Ctrl + F climate change in the budget, 0 results come up. There is one funding measure of $247m to encourage the private sector to invest in low emissions technologies, mainly hydrogen (which involves burning fossil fuels to create) and no budget for renewables. 

The Morrison Government has committed an additional $547 million for mental health and suicide prevention compared to last year.

A stack of it is going to Lifeline and regional programs.

While no additional sessions have been added, the extra 10 Medicare-subsidised psych/therapist visits brought in during the pandemic are set to stay.

The gov says they'll provide more than $180bn in education, but in the fine print, a big chunk of this will go toward private schools. 

No big news for universities either – just funding for commercialising research. Not like we needed support for international students and fees anyway.

Tradies and apprentices were the big winners here, with incentives for employers and those starting training.

New apprentices will receive $5000, while up to $15,000 in wage subsidies will be offered to those who actually take them on.  

Additionally, there’s a $3.7 billion investment in training for skilled workers.

Sadly, we present to you our smallest section of the budget. In what’s been a tough few years for the arts industry, no significant support for arts/culture has been announced.

The RISE fund has been allocated $20m. This was set up to support the arts during COVID and has previously copped backlash for not being enough to keep the sector going.

The National Museum and independent cinemas are also receiving a boost.

The rising cost of living has been given temporary attention, with a six-month cut to fuel. It’ll save someone who drives a medium-sized car about $10 a week.

One-off $250 payments for people on JobSeeker or Youth Allowance and a one-off tax cut of $420 will be given to low/middle-income earners in coming weeks.

Sounds great hey? Any help is accepted, but there’s no long-term, immediate plan to actually increase wages and lower inflation.

On a brighter note: endometriosis, breast cancer and domestic violence support have been given boosts.

You might be thinking ‘cool, what happens now?’

This year’s budget was particularly important given there’s an election coming up. Bad budgets can make or break a party’s chance at the election (Tony Abbott’s in 2014 was super bad then he got the chop).

The next election is set to show whether the Morrison Government prioritising the votes of tradies and regional Australians over young voters and low-middle income earners will work in his favour…