Middle class welfare cuts? - Independents

I don't agree at all with raising the GST (goods and services tax). I was against it from the start as it unfairly taxes people who can least afford it. I doubt either Gillard or Abbott would contemplate raising it anyway, it'd be politically disastrous. It may happen down the track but certainly not in the near future. 

The two independents who met with the PM and treasurer the other day did however make some suggestions regarding the middle class welfare that exists in Australia, despite an ACOSS report recently citing 13% of Australians living below the poverty line. I wholeheartedly agree with their views on this.

The federal government should make deeper cuts to middle-class handouts, the Prime Minister was told in a recent meeting with two key independents, who are also backing an increase in the GST. 

Independent MPs Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott have urged Julia Gillard and the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, to face unpopular and tough decisions before next year's election. 

The two government allies met with the Labor pair last week, Mr Windsor arguing against any kind of middle-class welfare if the government was ''serious about the surplus''.

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The New England MP told Ms Gillard and Mr Swan in the private meeting that he believed the time had come to make the hard decisions and ''bite the bullet'' in removing large parts of the middle-class welfare handouts. 

This included the baby bonus - which the government announced in last month's mini-budget would be reduced from $5000 to $3000 for the second and subsequent child - and family cash incentives for families implemented ''during the Howard era as straight-out vote buyers, when the mining boom was rolling and we had the cash''. 

Mr Windsor said he believed Labor would seriously consider deeper cuts to family entitlements if it ''really, really [wanted] to chase that elusive surplus''. Read more

Finally someone who's not afraid to tell it like it is. And they're right that many of these cash give-aways are from the Howard gov (apparently more fiscally responsible than Labor?). I remember it well, Howard would get up on the stage pre-election, on one particular occasion announced something like $30billion in handouts. And this money wasn't going to the poor who really needed it, it was targeted to working people as a vote buyer. It didn't just happen once either, it was election after election Howard kept handing out bazillions to people who just didn't need it.

Now that money is getting tighter for Australia, surely it's time to look at all these handouts in a reasonable way. It's not just a small amount of money either, the amounts involved are huge. Yet people like me have to jump through I dunno how many hoops just to get a pittance.