This is pretty just a rant topic for me to vent some of my frustration over Australian politics.
For non-Australians a brief introduction.
Last year Australia got a new PM Tony Abbot from the Liberal party which is our conservative party.
They promised a lot of things pre-election with no costings for the various programs they announced and a lot of it seemingly on the fly.
Australia is on the tail end of a mining boom rich in natural resources Coal, Uranium etc we sold a lot of it to China mostly during the latter half of the 90s which the Liberal government at the time used to bank roll various tax cuts around election time basically voter bribes.
The mining boom has declined a bit in the last few years in part due to the GFC which actually managed to survive with relatively little damage around the same time we also had a few natural disasters such as the floods in Queensland and New South Wales and the bushfires in Victoria which devastated the states and are still being cleaned up after in some places.
Going through these the country still maintained a reasonably good economy with one of the lowest Debt to GDP rates in the world.
From the moment the Liberal party were voted out in 2007 the Liberals had started a subtle at first fear campaign with a message of economic doom and gloom.
This of course became less and less subtle and eventually turned to out right lies by the time of last year's elections.
With the help of some wealthy backers like Murdoch and the mining companies somehow Tony Abbot had gotten into office.
The very next day election promises started breaking with I think no election promises remaining at this point.
Among the big promises were the cheaper but lower quality broadband network which they announced without pricing or any real details which has been delayed significantly and is going to end up costing the country a lot more to eventually replace.
By the time they finish it the tech will be 10 years out of date and they'll have to put in place the Labor NBN network.
They also promised no cuts to Health, Education or to the 2 public broadcasters.
Today the budget came down with large cuts to Health, Education and to the 2 public broadcasters (although they got off light apparently since it could have been a lot worse).
On top of that are significant changes to the welfare system.
Currently unemployed people can get an unemployment benefit after about a month's wait it's enough money to struggle on.
Unemployment comes in 2 payment types depending on age for under 22 it's Youth Allowance and over 22 is Newstart which is about $90 more.
As of July next year people under 25 will be put on the lower paying Youth Allowance.
People under 30 claiming unemployment will have 6 month waiting periods for payment and the payment has a time limit of 6 months after which they will go back to the waiting list for the next 6 months, while on the payments they'll also have to work 25 hours a week for an unpayed mandatory job (Work for the Dole) to keep their payments the majority of the Work for the Dole programs teach nothing, pay nothing and are basically free labour for non profit companies.
Youth unemployment is currently at least at 25% some estimates say around 28% but the real stat could very well be higher considering the deceitful practices of the studies which count volunteer work and minor work (like under 10 hours a week) as being employed.
Universities are getting further unregulated allowing them to charge what they want which will of course drive up course fees at the same time the earnings level for student loan repayments has been lowered.
One of the family payments has been scrapped while another has been frozen at it's current rate for the next 2 years.
16000+ jobs are also being cut from the Public Sector.
(On top of thousands of State level cuts that almost match that number in my state alone).
This same party is currently being investigated for corruption in state level politics.
Foreign aid was also slashed as was the Australia network which broadcast TV to neighbouring countries like Fiji etc.
But there was an increase in military spending including 12 billion dollars on outdated lemon fighter jets which could possibly cost an additional 12 billion to maintain.
A big loser in this is Science with drastic cuts to science research with departments like CSIRO (which "invented" Wifi and gets a good deal of money from it in patent law suits).
An increase in the pension requirement age to 70 (the current Life expectancy is at 81), cuts to disability,increase to the fuel subsidy driving up fuel prices even higher, mandatory co-payments for visiting doctors and buying medication and many other things.
All of these "share the pain" austerity measures built on the lie that this country is in a debt crisis.
We weren't before but very soon we will be.
I'm actually somewhat lucky because I happen to be turning 30 and will miss some of the crueller policies coming in.
It's still 2 more years until the next election.
Hopefully the independents, Labor and the Greens will try to block this budget in the senate.
Not very hopeful for the next years.
